


Please Read the Fine Print

by Duo_Swords



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Adventure, Blood, Eventual relationship, F/M, Gore, Horror, M/M, Minor Character Death, More tags/warnings as story progresses, Perhaps more than slight, Psychological Horror, Slice of Life, Slow Build, Torture, Violence, Worldbuilding, plot heavy, slight AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-26
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-02-27 02:18:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 29,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2675210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duo_Swords/pseuds/Duo_Swords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Hello, I'm Dana Sherman reporting to you live about 30 miles from the epicenter of one of the largest earthquakes in Oregon's recent history. Predicted to be about --- on the Richter Scale, Experts estimate --- billion dollars of damage, not accounting for the lives lost.</p><p>This earthquake is estimated to have occurred near the center of the small town of Gravity Falls and the surrounding earth foundation is estimated to have effectively collapsed, sinking the town into the recesses of the earth."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lost in the Fog

"Hello, I'm Dana Sherman reporting to you live about 30 miles from the epicenter of one of the largest earthquakes in Oregon's recent history. Predicted to be about --- on the Richter Scale, Experts estimate --- billion dollars of damage, not accounting for the lives lost.

This earthquake is estimated to have occurred near the center of the small town of Gravity Falls and the surrounding earth foundation is estimated to have effectively collapsed, sinking the town deep into the recesses of the earth.

Wild fires are spreading rapidly in the surrounding the area, despite the collective efforts of firefighters and wilderness rangers alike. The fires have created an effective barrier against rescue efforts and nothing is yet known about the conditions within the buried tragic town or the fate of the town folk within it. There has been no reports of survivors of town folk as of yet. More news as it--"

Vision is blurred. Head is throbbing something fierce. There is pain everywhere; standing up is a challenge, walking is impossible.

 

"Wait, there is someone in the woods-- Hey! Hey kid!"

 

Breathing shallow, senses screaming, black spots in vision, knees hit the ground.

 

"Eric, put that camera down and help me with the-- Kid! Oh my god, he collapsed. Tom, call for an ambulance!"

 

Vision is failing. Something touches him, softly, bringing tundras of sharp pain through his system. He groans, the movement of his throat feels like sand paper scrapping against the walls of his esophagus.

 

"Hey, Hey, can you hear me? There's so much blood. Get me that ambulance, Tom! He's still breathing. Kid, you're going to be ok."

 

There is a aggressive throb in his forehead. Voices are shouting but he could not make out the words. Nothing is felt but the splintering and the breaking of bones at every movement; every breathe is pure agony

 

Darkness from a dimming vision is a blessing, sending his aching body, finally, to rest. In a small recess of his brain that is not screaming from the pain, he wonders if he is dying and if death could come more quickly.


	2. A Cursory Examination

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He wakes up.

He opens his eyes and his vision is still blurred. Fortunately, the pain has tapered to a low thud, allowing his frazzled senses to relax and give more accurate cues to his surroundings.

He hears frantic voices and a loud whirling noise of a machine. He can feel wires in and all over his chest, tubes in his mouth and nose. He feels sweat, blood, and dirt stick to his skin; however, what truly worries him is what he can't feel. He can't feel his arms or legs, can't feel his fingers and he can't move anything. His head is spinning in a hundred different directions and the voices surrounding him sounds frantic.

The whirling noise is getting louder with the thump-thump-thump of his ever-beating heart. A voice shouts something and there something placed around his nose and his tube filled mouth. He closes his eyes and darkness greets him.

\-------------————••••

He opens his eyes and his vision is not blurred. Well, it is blurred, just not as much as it was before. He could vaguely make out white walls, two small chairs and a window to his left, and the multitudes of beeping and blinking electronic equipment to his right.

The blanket covering him is thin, the folds curve around the abstract shapes of wires and tubes connected to his body. Idly, with his eyes, he follows one of the hidden wires to a bag filled with translucent fluid hooked to a stand. A name popped into his head, IV bag. Then another, hospital.

He could distantly hear a woman saying, "Doctor Alec, the patient just woke up."

Her voice is crisp and clear, but unfamiliar. He wonders who could it belong to.

"Thanks, Cher, call the sherif but don't let anyone in until I give the green light."

"Yes, Doctor, I'll call them right away."

A man in a white coat appeared at the doorway. The man has a handsome face which wrinkled around his eyes when he smiled. "Hey there. I'm Doctor Alec Brinston. You are in the Ashwood Memorial Hospital. Nice to see you back in the world of the living."

He tried to thank the doctor for probably saving his life but quickly realized that there were several tubes crammed into his mouth. He looked around, the tubes in his mouth and the brace around his neck prohibited complete mobility of his head, but he managed to signal to Doctor Alec what he wanted to know. 

"You're currently in Ashwood, Oregon, a small town just south of Portland."

His eyes widened in surprise. Ashwood, Oregon? How did he get here?

Gloved fingers pinched his eyelids apart as a bright light flashed in his eyes, distracting him from his thoughts, "you have several serious injuries but we've managed to patch you up. Move your eyes side to side for me please. Good."

The flashlight was switched off and placed on the side table. "The nine AM newscast found you standing in the middle of the forest covered in blood. You're very lucky, kid; if they didn't find you when they did, you could have died with the injuries you had. Now that you can breath on your own, I'm going to pull the intubation tube from you're mouth, it will just sting a little bit."

His throat felt a quick scratching sensation as Doctor Alec extracted the tube from his mouth leaving his trachea feeling raw and dry.

"A-..." His throat burned intensely and his eyes watered as he began violently coughing.

"Woah, take it easy there, kiddo. You probably won't be able to talk for today," the doctor began peeling back the thin blanket revealing a mural of blues, dark reds, and sickly yellows on bandages and castes. The doctor gently examined the caste on his left arm, "your left arm was completely shattered when you came in here but now it seems to be healing up quite nicely. You might not gain full mobility of that arm and it may be a long while before you move it again, but, for now, let's see if you are still capable of feeling in your limbs. Can you move your fingers for me?"

He stared down at his pale veined fingers, one of the few parts of his body that wasn't bandaged up tightly. They looked small and frail, almost alien, attached to the thick bandage that wrapped around his arms. He willed his fingers to moved and was almost surprised when the pale appendages began to twitch back and forth in odd jerky movements.

"Wow," the doctor sounded thoroughly surprised, almost excited, "now the toes!"

As the doctor edged him on, he looked down at his feet. He could barely see his toes though the thick bandages covering his legs. He gave them a wiggle and they twitched slightly up and down.

"Fantastic! All your tendons are still working! That's amazingly fast for only a month of healing," Doctor Alec affirmed as he retrieved a stethoscope from a small table.

A whole month? He's been out for a whole month? Breathing fast, he attempted to speak again before experiencing another fit of coughing.

"What did I say about talking," Doctor Alec scolded mildly, "You need to let your throat recover for today and we can try talking tomorrow." The doctor proceeded to place the cold tool onto his multicolored chest, "Breathe in and out for me, please?"

He breathed deeply at the doctor's instruction; the air tickled his painful throat.

"Your lungs are still damaged but they're slowly recovering," the doctor explained, scribbling absentmindedly into a notepad, "looks like you have a long road of recovery ahead of you, kiddo, but don't worry about that for now. Get some rest. I'll have the Sheriff Rowdy come tomorrow with his questions."

After the short physical examination, he felt thoroughly exhausted. He would think on what the doctor had told him tomorrow and ask a few questions of his own. His eyes drooped as Doctor Alec put away his medical tools. Before his head hit the pillow, he heard Doctor Alec close the door and talk quietly with someone outside the room.


	3. A Day to Remember

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now for something completely different.

He opens his eyes to find a room filled with... curious things. Torn wall paper, a wooden owl clock facing a small antique TV and a matching wooden... What is that? A cabinet aquarium? And wow... Is that a... Dinosaur skull table next to that faded green striped sofa? The room looks completely absurd, yet strangely familiar.

His eyes scan around the room. It is dark, save for the dim light shining from the waterfall landscape lamp and the televisi- he pauses.

A girl is sitting on a green striped sofa, watching the TV. Her shoulders shake with the rapid raise and fall of her chest. She's laughing but he can't hear her voice. However, just seeing her go through the motions makes him feel oddly at ease.

She turns towards him and her face is... blurred. She seems so familiar but he just can't remember...

Before he could say a word to the girl, the room begins to shake. Furniture, dinosaur skull, owl clock- they begin to shift and twist and turn rhythmically with each sway of the walls. She turns away from him, face scanning around the room, her hands gripping tightly to the sides of the sofa.

He feels sweat beginning to accumulate on his forehead and his feet itch to run, his fight or flight response kicking in.

_He can't. She's still here._

She turns to him and, though her blurred face conceals her eyes, he knows that she is staring straight at him.

"You should run."

It wasn't her voice who spoke the words. The room turns black. He stumbles forward.

He's blind in pitch darkness. He runs but he feels like he's getting no where. Turning around to see if anything was chasing him, he finds a dark forest stretching out behind him. In the lone illumination of the half moon, the shadowed pines loom over him, looking sinister, alien.

Fear begins to accumulate at the bottom of his stomach.

_Just run! RUN! KEEP RUNNING!_

It was that voice again. It sounded high-pitched and inhuman but undoubtedly male and... strangely familiar.

He could hear the cracking and tearing of branches over the pounding of his heart. As he resumes running, he sees the woods around him shake rhythmically, following the enormous steps of some unknown creature.

The voice whispers, " _It's_ coming."

He ran faster, his lungs and muscles working overdrive. He had no idea who the voice was and even less about what it said was coming, but that didn't matter. All he could think to do was to run.

As he ran into a clearing, his foot snags on something hard and sharp, tripping him into the hard mud floor. Frantically looking back to see what had tripped him, he spies a shiny silver hook attached to a black device shaped like a gun.

 _A grappling hook!_ a female's voice, young and enthusiastic, echoed in his mind's walls. The blurred image of the girl on the green striped sofa flashes before his eyes. Unknown thoughts beam through his mind.

She's gone.

He's still here.

Where did she go?

This is all his fault.

Is she ok?

If only he didn't-

A loud high-pitch alien scream resounded in the dark woods, piercing his ear drums. He scrambled to his feet, grabbing the device- _GRAPPLING HOOK_. As he got ready to sprint, a sharp pain triggered in his ankle.

 _I must have twisted it when I tripped!_ he thought. Heart racing, he frantically searches around for a temporary place to hide and spots a large hollowed oak conveniently placed five feet to his right.

As quickly as he could, he limped over and hid in the small concave opening of the dead oak. The space was small and cramped, forcing him to shift into an uncomfortable position in order to completely stuff himself in between the hollowed walls. Pain seared in his ankle and he could feel it beginning to swell angrily at the continual distress he was putting it through. Throughly miserable, exhausted, and a few marbles away from complete hysterics, he sat awkwardly in that tiny cove, shivering as he waited for whatever danger was following him to pass.

To occupy his mind on something other than his racing heart and the pain in his ankle, he examined the treasure he had lost his mobility over. The grappling hook looked small in the darkness of the cove; it's silver hook shone dully in the presence of the half moon. He vaguely contemplated who it belonged to, the blurred girl who put him at such ease. He felt a sharp pang of worry but he couldn't remember why.

A sickening _crunch_ of dead leaves and dried debris brought Dipper out of his thoughts. From the dim light of the moon, he could barely see the tall dark figure of a creature with milky white incisors and long sharp claws. It hadn't spotted him yet, but he could feel it's bright yellow eyes scanning the trees for his scent.

He scratched his face nervously and hissed softly as he retracted his hand. Staring down at his fingers, he noticed sticky viscous fluid roll slowly down his fingers.

 _You should wake up now!_  The familiar male voice urged, sounding as panicked as he felt, if not more so.

The creature slowly turned its head towards his general direction.

_Wake up! WAKE UP!_

He awoke with a start, practically jumping out of sleep. He was breathing fast like he ran a three day marathon. As a large amount of pain began to register, a beep to his right signaled a whirling sound and he felt the machine inject morphine into his arm numbing some of the pain and panic. Man, he wished such a machine existed in his dream.

With his right hand, he touched the side of his cheek where he had felt the viscous fluid oozing from. He hissed as pain seared through him as vividly as it had in his dream and he instinctively let go of the wet fabric of the bandage on his cheek. He looked down at his fingers, feeling an odd sense of déjà vu as he watched a small tickle of blood flow down his fingertips.

Any irrational being would claim that the dreamscape had affected his real body, but he didn't. He knew that his body was already gravely injured before he went to sleep and that he hadn't had the time to calculate just how grievous his injuries were. Well, there was one more to add to the list.

 _At least the dream was over_ he thought with a sigh of relief.

"Wow, Kid. You look terrible!" The voice from the dream declared enthusiastically in the small dark room.

Completely wide-eyed and bewildered, he tried to turn his head towards the source of the noise, sending pain tingling down from his neck to his spine. He groaned and, through the film of tears, squinted his eyes in the dark to see...absolutely no one there but the chairs next to the window. The sky was dark still, save for the bright lights illuminating the street. The digital clock on the side table alerted him to the ungodly hour his body had chosen to wake him up.

A soft chuckle resounded in his right ear, "It's hilarious watching you hurt yourself; not that you haven't done enough of that already."

Confused and a bit disorientated, he slowly scans the room, trying to put a face to the voice.

"Where could I be?" The voice cooed playfully, this time in his left ear. The male voice was cheery, charming, and oddly familiar, like that of an old friend. Though the voice didn't sound very friendly, downright cynical if you ask him, he still felt comforted hearing someone familiar after whatever the hell he had gone though.

He had to say that his brain is very weird for even considering this seemingly incorporeal voice as a source of comfort. Maybe this was an audio hallucination which were the 'common side effects of severe head trauma' Doctor Alec was alluding towards. His brain conjured a disembodied voice to comfort him in his time of stress. Didn't sound very comforting if you asked him personally.

A loud and angry "HEY, PINE TREE!" broke him out of his revere. It was then he realized that the 'voice' was talking to him for several minutes and he had been so engrossed in his own thoughts that he had not heard a single word. Then he processed what the voice said.

 _Pine Tree?_  He thought as he scratched his head, _is that my name?_

An image of alien dark forest firs and looming tall twisting trunk from his dream brought shivers down his spine. As a name, however, it didn't seem to fit quite right. But the voice had clearly addressed him, to be sure.

 _Wait, wait, what WAS my name?_  

He wrinkled his brow, concentrating, trying to remember anything that didn't happen in the dream or the past day. His mind drew a blank.

"Hahaha! You're a riot, kid!" The voice became light and friendly again. He could swear that he heard a clap from non-existent hands as the voice continued, "then again, I do the  _finest_ work. I'm the best of my trade after all! You're lucky to have me, Pine Tree!"

He could not be anymore confused than he was now. What did this voice mean by that and what was his name?

"Pine Tree-"

What was this voice talking about? Did his brain actually conjure this voice?

"PINE Tree-"

What was his nam- And why in the seven hells was this voice calling him Pine Tree?

"You know that you're not mute right, Pine Tree?"

Something in him snapped, "For the umpteenth time, MY NAME IS NOT PINE TREE!"

His voice was hoarse and cracked from long term disuse. A startling silence filled the room save for the beeps and whirls of the electrical equipment. He froze, a chill spreading throughout his body. Did he know this voice? This annoying banter seemed oddly familiar but not quite.

A loud angry beep came from one of the monitors to his right. He turned to see the black screens, one for his heartbeat and other bodily functions, another for- he spied his reflection on the small round mirror attached to the monitor. In the only visible light coming from the street lamp outside, he could see a dark gaunt face staring back at him, hair bent out of shape underneath the bloodstained bandaged that covered his- _Birthmark_ supplied his brain. Maybe he could remember something if he saw it.

Ignoring the dark chuckle of that voice in his head- was it his subconscious? Hell, if he cared- he grabbed the collective machines with his good hand and wheeled it over. Once it was close enough, he yanked the mirror out of its holder and laid it on his lap. With shaking fingers, he pulled the bandage and some stray brown hair away from his forehead.

Red skin rose up, away from the clammy pale white of his forehead, like a angry scar. However, it formed a distinct shape like a-

"Pine Tree!" The voice exclaimed, surprising him out of his concentration.

"No," he whispered. His throat hated him for continuing to strain and torture it but he needed to say this. He need to know. "It doesn't, it looks more like a-"

 _Dipper_ that mysterious part of his brain supplied once again. He felt a puzzle piece slot back into place.

"I don't know," the voice chimed in, sounding curious, "looks more like a pine tree to me."

"It does not! It looks like a... Wait... That's my name. Isn't it," He excitedly repeated the word a couple of times, feeling that comfortable familiarity roll off his tongue.

"Yeah," the voice continued with cold amusement, "I told you your name was Pine Tree."

"No! Dipper! Not Pine Tree- That's my name, Dipper Pines!" He shouted triumphantly before the inevitable fit of coughing befell him.

"Whatever you say, Pine Tree," the voice rolled its eyes. Dipper wanted to know how the hell he knew that a _voice rolled its eyes_ , "look kid, we're not fully healed yet. Might be best to lay low for a while."

"What?" Dipper whispered in inquiry but the voice was silent for the rest of the night.


	4. Simple Inquiries

The digital clock flashed a neon green 8:25, the numbers mocking him from its plastic black casing.

He groaned, bright morning rays piercing his sleep deprived eyes. He hadn't gotten a lick of sleep after that stimulating revelation he had last night. Though his body was completely exhausted, a ring of questions fiddled though his mind; Who was he before his 'accident'? How did he get so many injuries? And who was that girl from his dream?

He let out a huff of exhaustion and frustration. Something was nagging at the back of his mind, something nagging to be found, but a flare of intense pain forbade him from chiseling any deeper.

Though he was thankful that the voice from last night had not returned, he dearly wished it had. He swore it knew more then what it was letting on. Again, if it was his subconscious, this would make sense, but he had a nagging feeling that it was not his subconscious, that the voice was not his own.

Dipper furled his eyebrows at the new mystery presented before him. What could the voice be, if not his own? He wasn't mentally unstable, was he? It would be normal for a person to hear strange voices as his brain recalibrated after extreme trauma, but a part of him is stubbornly persistent that the voice was not his. He had once read a study on schizophrenic patients, how the voices they were hearing were actually their own voice but projected at different frequencies. Even a normal person could mistaken their own voice as belonging to someone else but the difference was-

A sharp pain pieced his mind and he leaned forward to grasp his head in his good hand. Where did he get that memory from?

A wave of nausea and an odd inappropriate sort of giddiness overtook him. His nerves felt fried, messing with his already fragmented emotions, and a creeping darkness invaded the corners of his vision.

Well, whatever the mystery led, he lacked the energy to follow that train of thought any further. Dipper let his throbbing head rest on the pillow once more, eyes fluttering closed.

\-------------————••••

When his eyes opened from a dreamless slumber, the sun was beginning to set, yet he felt more exhausted then he had before.

A young thin woman with bejeweled spectacles and a nurse's gown was fiddling with the flow rate of the IV bag connected to his right arm. She didn't seem to notice him wake.

Dipper opened his mouth to speak but was quickly overwhelmed by the sudden inhale of air, burning his exposed throat. The nurse jumped at his cough, snapping her head around to face him with a timid smile, "oh! You're awake! I better tell Doctor Alec."

"Wait-" Dipper managed through the fit of coughing, grabbing the nurse's sleeve with his right hand. As she paused, her head whirled toward him, no words came to mind and he dumbly stared into the nurse's hazel eyes.

She stared back, equally confused, her bow-shaped mouth pursed awkwardly. Then, in almost slow-motion, the tiny muscles contracted and stretched as those lips pulled together into a tighter line, her nose wrinkling under the weight of the plastic framed glasses. Dipper watched, caught in a strange rapture, as the lids of her eyes simultaneously peeled back, revealing twin expanding pupils, leaving the eyes almost void of it's hazel color. His mind supplied him with the emotion he was facing; fear.

Time seemed to have reverted back into its natural motion when the nurse yanked her sleeve from his grip and hurriedly crashed out of the room.

Dipper stared at the white hospital door as it softly clicked shut. The human facial muscles can truly perform a wide array of emotions unlike any other creature. He shook his head to rid him of the strange thoughts but only succeeded in doubling his vision and twisting his injured neck painfully. What just happened? He rubbed his neck through the brace to ease the pain.

A moment later, a frazzled Doctor Alec stumbled into the room. The doctor's kind blue eyes stared down into his own black ones? Brown? He couldn't remember his own eye color. "Hiya, kid. How ya doin'?"

"Hi... Doc...." Dipper spoke cautiously, his throat still sore from the coughing.

"Ah! I see that you've regained your vocal functions!" Doctor Alec grinned, "have you been experiencing any problems with breathing or anything?"

Last night's incident was on the tip of his tongue but he retracted it at the last second, "No, Doc. I feel... ok..."

"Hmmm," Doctor Alec switched his attention to the bundles of humming electrical equipment, studying the readings carefully. Without breaking eye contact with the machine, the doctor fumbled through his large lab coat pockets, brought out a standard spiral bounded notebook, and began flipping through pages.

While the doctor was working, Dipper turned to his gaze slowly, careful not to twist his neck this time, out the window. The image remained unchanged from the night before save for the occasional runner or car milling down the road and the golden rays of the lazy setting sun replacing dull lamp glow. In the corner of the window, just an inch out of sight, he noticed the small outline of a bus stop sign.

Public transport. Stark white lettering on green sign post. A little blue bench under a tall oak. Waiting for parents who never came. A little girl's voice cried, small and defeated, _where are we going to go?_

"-so I'd like to ask you a couple of questions."

Dipper's eyes snapped open. He slowly shifted his head toward the doctor who was no longer staring at the small machine's screen, calm blues focusing intensely on him, "...huh?"

"Oh, it's nothing serious, kid," Doctor Alec chuckled, "just standard procedure. The sherif will come with the actual questions. He came by today but, seeing that you were asleep and still recovering, we decided it was best for him to come back tomorrow. Anyways, I can't call you kid forever! Let's start with something basic. What is your name?"

Dipper's response was automatic, "Dipper Pines."

The pen began its merry dance across the notebook page, "Dipper, as in the Big and Little Dipper constellations? You know, it's kind of ironic. Some of the nurses began calling you by that name when we saw that scar on your forehead."

"Birthmark," Dipper corrected with a small upturn of his lips, "And I know, that's how I got the nick."

The pen ceased it's motion, "it's a nickname?"

Dipper blinked rapidly, suddenly acutely aware of the throbbing beginning at the base of his skull, "y-yeah... I guess- I think so..." He scratched his head, "I can't remember..."

"It's ok," the pen began it's scrawling dance again, "You've been through a very traumatic experience, I wouldn't be surprised if you developed a mild stage of amnesia."

"Amnesia, a loss in memory caused by various brain traumas. The extent of such loss is weighed in equal amount to the extent of trauma the brain experienced. Amnesia is commonly sorted under two categories: anterograde and retrograde amnesia," Dipper recited the words as if reading off of a script, his eyes glazing over.

"A patient with anterograde amnesia will be unable to store new information into their long term memory banks which means that they wouldn't be able to make new memories. A patient with retrograde amnesia, on the other hand, is able to retain new memories; however, this type of amnesia leaves the patient unable to retrieve information, memories, about their past. It is not uncommon for patients suffering from either to regain previous loss, but, for the unfortunate, they will live the remainder of their life without-," Dipper blinked. Whatever spell that held him was broken.

Bits and fragments of his memory were resurfacing from the dark depths of his subconscious, memories he knew that the past Dipper wouldn't even remember. And he wasn't even sure how he knew that. This whole situation was a huge compacted ball of confusion.

The doctor looked wide eyed and astonished, his mouth slightly agape, "Very... Good... Well, do you remember your..." "

I don't remember," Dipper interrupted before the doctor could finish his sentence.

"Ok..." The pen began scribbling at a methodical pace, "on to the next question, then. How old are you?"

He blurted out the number his brain had suddenly supplied him, "15."

"And you are sure of this?" The doctor asked, pen pausing for a brief moment.

"Positive," Dipper muttered, a bit self-conscious of the pen resuming it's scrawl with every word he spoke.

"Well, Dipper, do you remember any way to contact your parents or any other close relatives?"

A gravely voice spoke gently in his mind, _"Kid, if anything ever happens, you know who to call."_  "971-259-6622," he rubbed his eyes, the headache had spread throughout his mind, like soldiers marching, weaving in and out of the large maze-like tendrils of his brain, thump, thump, thumping all the while. _Be a good little soldier and I might take you and your --- around the diner sometime. Order one of those big ice cream sundaes you two are always whining about._

"So, who is Grunkle Stan?"

"Huh?" Dipper opened his eyes, his vision temporarily stung with sun spots.

"You were mumbling something that sounded like, 'with extra sparkles, Grunkle Stan, she likes sparkles,'" the doctor stared at him curiously, as if he was some type of puzzle the doctor wanted to solve, some type of _cypher_ he wanted to decode.  _He's there. In every whisper uttered, every secret uncovered. There. Always watching with that all seeing eye. Cannot trust him. Like the book says, cannot trust anyone._

"Dipper?" Doctor Alec's face was so close to his own that he could make out the specks of grey in those blue eyes, thick blown brows wrinkled with concern.

"What?" This was the third time he zoned out of the conversation. What was wrong with him? Was he going insane? Was this what going insane feels like?

"Calm down, kiddo. You're not going insane," a solid hand grasped Dipper's shoulder, sending a sharp pain threading down to his spine. He let out a hiss, arching his back, suddenly actively aware of his multiple injures.

"I-I..." He blinked rapidly. A high pitched laughter resounded in his mind, his entire body tensing at the sound. _Memories, these are all just memories. Get it together, Dipper._  

The rough hand gently pushed Dipper down onto the pillow, a calm measured voice soothing his troubled mind, "I think we should stop here for today. You need to sleep and let your brain fix itself. We can always pick up where we left off tomorrow."

"Doc-" the pounding footfalls of his imaginary soldiers stomped between every discernible thought track, as if his mind was creating a barrier between his sanity and his fragmented memories. A sudden wave of fatigue overwhelmed him. Maybe he should listen to Doc Alex's advice. The doctor should know what he was talking about. He was a doctor after all.

"Take it easy now. I'll be back with Sherif Rowdy tomorrow. He's been dying to meet you," Dipper could hear the smile in the doctor's voice. God, Dipper hated it when adults treated him like a child. He was fifteen, a teen and a very capable employee with his own salary and taxes, thank you very much.

Dipper's eyes drooped shut as he felt the warm weight lift from his shoulder.

"Thanks, Doc," the small voice that spoke those words sounded pleasantly and hazily distant.

He was asleep before he heard the click of the door closing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Btw: Thank wiki for the amnesia definition.


	5. Accidental Eavesdropping

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Here be swears and pain. If you dont like that stuff, please consult your local blind eye associate to wipe that memory away for you.

Something large, fat, and round punched him in the stomach. He shouted obscenities, his watering eyes flying open to see... A blurred pink wiggling mass caught in the contours of dark patch-work blue- Strange... The hospital blanket was a pale turquoise when he had last check-

"HA HA!"

He snapped his head, in an odd déjà vu moment, toward the sound. Just as before, he saw no one but a small child sized mattress clothed in pink blankets and soft fuchsia pillows. The colors would have been mild, fitting for a room of dark wood and narrow corners, if not for the vomit of glitter and sequins splattered across every inch of the bedding. Not to mention the throng of stuffed animals thrown under bed covers and on the wooden floor in a frenzy. Glitter and stuffing oozed out of worn holes like battle wounds.

The whole scene would look very much like a typical girl's bedroom if blood had not slowly poured out from under the bedsheets.

 _What? WHAT?_  A sharp pang of panic and worry shot through him. He rubbed his eyes. This all felt so unreal to him.

When his eyes opened, towering dark pines greeted him, the small dish moon glimmering faintly through the thick branches. He looked down where the blankets used to be to find a soft bed of grass and moss covering him.

He stood up, padding the plant fibers off of his trousers. He was in their room just a couple of blinks ago and, suddenly, he was here, in this nightmare again. What the heck is going on?

Dipper turned to see the familiar dead oak, a wink of silver glimmered dully in that small concave opening. He crept over, trying not to crunch any leaves in his passing, and gingerly picked up the grappling hook, examining the large extending hook that was caked in mud and something bright red and fluid.

That's right. He had injured his ankle- the ankle which now seemed perfectly fine and well- when he tripped over this device. When he was running from something, some- His eyes grew wide in haunted realization as a loud crunch of prodding feet set off all his primitive alarms.

Before thoughts could form in his mind, Dipper ran. A scream behind him, high-pitched, alien, full of joy for the hunt, and the earthquake-like shaking of the forest caused his heart to drop to his stomach.

It had found him, it knew exactly where he was, and it- He willed his feet to run faster though he knew, instinctively, that at his current speed, he would not be able to outrun the massive creature.

The thicket of pine trees seem to dwindle as a clearing appeared before him. Seeing a wide birth of road brought his weary heart a small beat of hope. Maybe a car will pass through and he could- he was pressing his luck. he had no time to wait for a car. The creature was tight on his heel and there was no telling when any odd vehicle would cross this long expanse of road. The clearing was large and it was easy to spot a small child scampering across it. He had to run across, to the other side, the trees were better cover-

Long spindling arms reached out and grabbed his left arm, the spider-like fingers curling tightly around the appendage. Dipper screamed, a loud and keening sound like that of a wounded animal, as the fingers twisted and pulled, his small arm scattering in the massive pressure of the creature's iron grip.

He tripped and fell on his back, eyes to the stars, as the creature viciously pulled at its prize. He had misjudged how close the creature was and he was going to pay for it with his life. His eyes watered, from the fear or the pain he did not know, and he struggled, feebly, against the grip as the creature took its time to drag him ever so closer. The alien scream of delight froze him, wide-eyed with terror as he saw cheerful white lettering on illuminated green road sign:

WELCOME TO GRAVITY FALLS

Oh, how he wished they never came here. He closed his eyes, awaiting his fate.

"Ol' man Mcgibbins been spoutin' all kinds of crazy these days. Gnomes stealing pies from the ol' bakery, mermaids in the lake near the interstate, demons with tiny bat wings, the like!"

Dipper squeezed his eyelids tighter. He must be going insane from the pain because he swears he heard a-

"Mr. Mcgibbins always had a problem limiting his consumption of spirits," a familiar voice mused in good humor. 

"Yeah, but city folk like you don't understand," The first voice continued, "When Mcgibbins is on the booze, he never gets the right number. One time, he dialed his mom's telephone thinking it was 911, the stupid bastard. But now he called us five times. One after the other like he was the key witness to some deranged mass murder and he wanted everybody to know about it. Nah, he's not on the booze, he's on something else!"

"Maybe he wants some attention?" The second voice pondered, though it seemed that even he doubted that to be true.

"That does not explain the other eyewitness accounts of such 'creatures,'" a new smoother voice cut in, "there were multiple sightings of-" there was a long pause and a uncomfortable shuffling of papers, "a large and buff bipedal creature, that could only be described as a Minotaur, roaming the outskirts of the county forest."

"Well, in some places, people believe in Bigfoot. That don't mean there is a Bigfoot."

"The reports come with photographs," the smooth voice snapped irritably.

"There's plenty of photos of Bigfoot but that still don't mean there is a Bigfoot," the first voice responded stubbornly.

"Now, now, officers," the second voice, Doctor Alec's voice, spoke diplomatically in a calm, measured tone, "this is not the time to get riled up over the crazy things that's been going on."

Dipper slowly opened his eyes, hoping that they didn't noticed him wake. Fortunately, all three adults were fairly engrossed in the conversation at present and did not notice the fifteen-year-old squinting his eyes. He looked slowly around the room without rotating his head. He was correct, Doctor Alec was present in the room but the good doctor was accompanied by two new people wearing matching light brown uniforms. A man and a woman. The mysterious part of him, that seem to know everything, supplied him with the category, _local police._

"Ya know, these things started happening when that little town just south of ours had their 'incident,'" the man spoke gruffly, rubbing his handlebar mustache. He was a older man, unlike the doctor, his handsome features faded with time, the sun-bleached skin on his face was looser and his laughing lines shown more prominently. The man was a fit medium, taller than his partner but shorter than the doctor. A bright bronze star adorned his right breast pocket above the belly that saw too many years in the pub. _Sheriff,_  Dipper's mysterious mind concluded.

"You mean, those poor folks at Gravity Falls? Has there been any word of what actually happened there?" The doctor asked, genuine concern etched on his handsome features.

"Dunno, some yahoos from the government shut the place down. Said I don't got the 'clearance' so I don't get to hear a word. It's been a month already, but the fires are still blazing sky high from what I heard," the gruff voice, the Sheriff's voice, let out a long exasperated sigh.

"Some of those folks are good people," the smoother voice piped in. The female  _deputy_ , (man, that know-it-all voice in his head was getting real annoying) was young, around Doctor Alec's age, and she looked like a movie star. Slick blonde hair tied back in a pony-tail, high cheek bones, smoky green eyes, round rose lips curved downwards into an attractive frown, "I knew the old sherif and his deputy, a little crazy, but a good men all around. Such a shame."

"Jenny and I used to take tours around those parts," the sheriff explained, "got into a rough spot with the local tourist trap, but those guys lent a helping hand."

Dipper felt dazed, registering the man had said... Tourist Trap... He needed- 

"I need to get back," Dipper blurted, his voice hoarse and weak as if he had been screaming all night. Before the adults could utter a word, he continued, "I need to get back to Gravity Falls."


	6. It Comes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **WARNING:** Ok, this chapter has pretty brutal gore and elements that are not suitable for younger audiences. Please beware, if you do not like horror or explicit descriptions of blood and gore, do not continue. Gah, four in the fucking morning, exhausted.

"I need to get back to Gravity Falls."

Everyone turned towards him, whirling their heads around fast as if he caught them gossiping. Dipper shrunk back a little, surprised. There had been an impulse, a drive to say the words, though he knew not why.

The doctor was the first to recover. In a soft but stern tone, he responded, "You can't go there. Gravity Falls isn't safe for a kid like you."

Dipper bristled at his words, "I'm not a kid, I'm fifteen. Technically, a teen." 

"You're a kid," the woman, _deputy_ , spoke with a no-nonsense authority, "And until we find your parents or legal guardian, you are a ward of the state. We are responsible for you."

Someone cleared their throat, a gruff hacking sound that silenced the room, "that's enough," the older man turned to Dipper and gave him a wink, "Fifteen and almost a man grown, ain't ya, kid."

Dipper narrowed his eyes in response.

"Why don't we start over. Hiya," the older man, the sheriff, extended a wrinkled hand, a kind smile, and suddenly the tension left the room, "so this is the first we've met while you're awake."

Dipper took the proffered hand with his good one and gave it a cautious shake as the sheriff chattered on, "Name's Roman Summers, sheriff 'round these here parts, but everyone just calls me Rowdy. And it's pronounced 'Road-dy' like 'walking down a country road-DY,' not ' _Rowdy_.' That's just distasteful," he gave a nod in gesture to the woman, "the pretty one there is Jennifer Brinston, my deputy."

"Howdy," the deputy spoke evenly in way of greeting, eyes trained on a small black device she was holding.

"Dipper Pines," Dipper replied, tonelessly.

"What, you mean the constellation?" Sheriff Rowdy gave a hardy guffaw, "Your parents must have been off their rocker to name you that."

"It's a nickname," Dipper snapped in exasperation, "I don't exactly remember my real one."

"Ok," the deputy looked up, evidently completed with whatever task she was focused on, "well, do you have any means to contact your parents?"

"My... Parents...?" Dipper blinked slowly, irritation dissipating. His heart throbbed painfully in his chest and he blinked away the thin film of tears that was beginning to accumulate. _Sadness_. His mind explained the emotion but not the cause. This time, his body remembered what his brain did not.

"Parents?" He stared up at the deputy, his face warring between confusion and pain.

A brief reflection of his pain formed on the deputy's face. Empathy, how curious.

"Jenny," Doctor Alec spoke, his voice much softer than usual, "I received a number from Dipper the other day; area code (971) 259-6622. I had Cher call the number but it seems that the number had been disconnected or out of service."

Deputy Brinston stared fixedly at her device after a few touch manipulations, "that's because the signal is no longer in process... The number is for a phone from Gravity Falls."

The room seemed to darken with the mood as if the sun was overcast by thick clouds. No, that was wrong. The room was already unnaturally dark for early morning. He hadn't notice it earlier, too distracted by the cycle of chatter. Something was not right. There was a feeling of danger in his bones, an itch to run, run or die. Every wound on his body twitched with anticipation. Not at all unlike how he felt in his nightmares.

The deputy was the first to break the silence, "Dipper," her tone towards him was softer this time, laced with uncertainty, "do you know what happened in Gravity Falls?"

Before Dipper could open his mouth to speak, the door crashed open and slammed shut as a disheveled nurse scrambled in, her wide eyes wandering, unblinking. Her face was white as her hospital gown, her neat bun now a tangled mess, and she breathed in deep heavy gasps.

Doctor Alec took three long strides over to the shaking woman, strong hands holding her shoulders, stilling her, "Cher, what's the matter?"

Even in the company of her peers, the fear in her eyes never wavered, "m-mon-monster!"

"Oh, heavens above," Sheriff Rowdy pinched his nose in exasperation, "what is this town comin' to. There is no such thing as demons, sparkly vampires, or little green men hiddin' under ya pillow! Those creatures are reserved for cheap thrills to scare teenaged kids!"

"This is no goddamn horror movie!" She cried, manically ringing her hands together, hazel eyes wide, "People are dying! Didn't you- any of you- hear the screams?"

"No, Cher," Doctor Alec replied in a calm, soothing tone reserved for putting disgruntled children to sleep, "we didn't hear anything. Calm down, tell us what happened."

"No. No no no NO!" She shrugged off the doctor's hold. She turned abruptly, gripping the brass door handle, her knuckles white. Blood dripped from the back of her dress, red viscous fluid caked her shoes, "I don't know why I'm even here telling you this! I just-I just wanted... I'm getting out of here-"

"Oh my god, Cher, are you hurt?" the doctor began, staring down at the trail of bloody footprints that pooled around the nurse, "let me-"

A loud thump... thump... _thump_ could be heard from the other side of the door and the nurse gave an audible yelp as she scrambled away from the door, "It's here. IT'S HERE-"

"For crying out loud. Lady, shut up!" Sheriff Rowdy pulled out a long dull-black device that reminded Dipper of the grappling hook but double barreled and without the attached hook, wrinkled fingers finding purchase on the trigger. _A pump-action shotgun._ Despite not remembering exactly what it did or where it came from, Dipper felt oddly reassured by it's presence.

The nurse, Cher, huddled into the corner of the room, holding her arms as she shook to comfort herself, visibly traumatized. Sheriff Rowdy walked over to her, wrapping a spare hospital blanket around her shoulders and sat her down onto a chair. He then turned to his deputy and the doctor, "Alec, get a wheelchair. Jen, blockade the door, then help Alec get the boy onto the chair." 

"Got it," the two answered in unison and began their collective tasks. As the deputy moved a heavy cabinet against the small door, Doctor Alec tolled out the dusty chair, unfolded it open and padded the dust off. Without looking from his work, he said sternly, "Dipper, I'm going to need you to sit up for me, ok? "

Dipper sat up with great effort, his still fractured left arm protesting against the movement. His bandages, though replaced sometime during his sleep, was colored a sickly shade of yellow and dried brown. He shivered at the sight of himself, feeling unnaturally small and weak.

A loud CRASH of something pounding against the door froze Dipper, eyes wide as a deer's in headlights, realization kicking him like a ton of bricks. On the other side of that small wooden door was not just any monster, it was _his_ monster. The creature from his nightmares. He did not know how he knew this, but, as soon as the thought threaded through his mind, he knew it to be true. It had found him, in both dreamscape and reality.

A sharp scream, alien and inhuman, echoed in horrifying confirmation. The officers and the hospital staff wrapped their hands tightly around their ears to block out the piercing sound, but their faces still warped in pain.

The next few seconds blurred together.

Long black claws tore through the door and cabinet as if they were made of paper, revealing a creature that seemed too large and too small all at once. It's skin, for lack of a better term, was inky black, darker than night; it's eyes, twin ringlets of gold. It seemed to seep into the room, fusing with every shadow as it oozed through its makeshift doorway. It's teeth were no longer milky white but dark with red that poured out of its huge gaping mouth and pooled onto the tiled floor.

With long widening fingers, it grasped the screaming nurse from her chair and held her high in the air. The creature torn her body in two, separating chest from waist. The entire room was silent save her ear-splitting scream that grew louder and louder as she was continually ripped and shredded by those dark serrated teeth. Blood, viscera spilled everywhere, spattering the entire room in gore.

Something sticky, wet, _pulsing_  fell onto Dipper's lap, deep maroon soaking into pale turquoise like blood in water. Bile rose at the back of his throat as Dipper felt a numbing fog fall over his vision, his head hammering. This can't be happening. _This can't be happening._

Shouts and gunfire exploded all around him. In the corner of his eye he saw Sheriff Rowdy shouting obscenities as he open fired at the creature, hands shaking. Rough, strong arms wrapped around him, cradling him from bed onto false fabric, a front row seat to the horrors of hell.

Bullets did not even faze the beast. Large clawed hands grabbed the Sheriff who was still firing. It did not make a show of blood this time, deciding to slice his head off cleanly. The face rolled towards Dipper's wheel chair like a metal ball sliding towards a magnet. In death, the face aged ten years, a permanent expression of resignation etched onto fleshy features.

A scream of pure agony blew away the fog that clouded his mind. Dipper looked up to see Deputy Brinston, her small handgun repeatedly firing at the dark creature, her eyes glazed over with tears and choked sobs.

The creature ignored her, yellow eyes focusing on Dipper. A deep chill ran threw his spine as the creature's gaping mouth widened at the seams in a grotesque approximation of a grin. A long dark appendage reached out to grab him but, at the last second, Alec pushed the chair out of the way.

"ALEEEC!" Deputy Brinston screamed, a long mournful keening sound.

The doctor, someone he barely knew for three days, was almost certainly about to die. There had to be something he could do. Something... He just had to-

A soft voice chuckled in the dark recesses of his mind. It seemed all too cheerful in the mist of carnage and chaos, 'what could a worthless meat sack like you do against this creature.'

"Not now," he breathed under clenched teeth, eyes fixed on the flailing man, the man who had saved his life, twice now, the man who was about to die, "there's no time to be crazy now."

'Trust me, Pine Tree. I looked for crazy but, unfortunately, didn't find any. Found a whole ton of stubborn though. And a door full of redheads... We need to have a talk about that.'

He screwed his eyes shut, "shut. up."

'You seem awfully attached to that human. How's we make a deal, you let me use your body for say... 60 minutes, no more, no less, and I'll save that human for you.'

A flash of words, DO NOT TRUST, appeared in his minds eye. That voice, his subconscious or otherwise, was not at all friendly despite his earlier speculations. Behind that bright facade, something dark walked those halls. Dipper knew to trust the part of him that urged to distrust the other, "Not a chance."

'40 minutes?'

"No."

'Pine Tree, you drive a hard bargain. 30 minutes, take it or leave it. I'll even repair all your injuries while I'm at it.'

"I said NO-"

'How's this: If you don't let me in now, _we will all die._ '

Dipper weighed his options. Despite the screaming protests in his mind, he could not see many other routes to take. All seemed to end with death and this one didn't seem any better. The voice was probably just an extension of his mind going insane from the trauma. He could indulge a little crazy... Right?

Heart heavy, Dipper sighed in acquiescence, "Alright, but everyone has to live. And you are going to stick to the deal this time or deal's off and we all die."

He wasn't sure if the voice could bring back the dead. He wasn't even sure if the voice was a figment of his imagination or not, but, well, to hell with it, they'll probably all die anyway.

The voice swore in a language that hurt to think about, 'Fine! But you owe me a day!'

Abruptly, as if the phone on the other side hung up, Dipper could no longer feel the heavy presence of another consciousness coexisting with his own. Welp, so much for indulging a little crazy.

He stared glumly into the tiny room. The floor was now infused in gore, white tiles all but vanished under thick viscous body fluid. The creature had expanded to envelope the entire room, eyes glowing with mirth as it tore pieces off of the now lifeless corpse of one Doctor Alec Brinston.

The deputy was covered head to toe in blood, the once blonde silky hair now filthy with brown. She screamed, howled, and scratched at the beast, desperately trying to pry those huge claws open, but it only tightened it's grip around the still form. The creature made no move to touch her, obviously enjoying her pain.

White hot rage blinded him.

That twisted _FUCK_!

The room began to haze in the fog of his fury, turning _monochrome_ around the edges- Wait. Wait. Wh-when did he stand up?

He felt an unknown tug on sides of his mouth as a hauntingly familiar, unusually cheery laughter pool out of his unwilling lips. Mouth moving on it's own accord, he spoke -didn't speak- in that high-pitched voice, "Kid, it's not your rodeo anymore so sit back and enjoy the show."

Darkness enveloped his mind as something alien screamed in anger. He knew that he should probably worry for his life, his body, or, hell, his _sanity_ , but all he could think about was... _What the fuck is a rodeo?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap! Stay tuned for the next time I decide to pull an all nighter to write this fic!
> 
> By the way, the phone number, I made it up. Forgot to mention it last time. If you called it, ha! Jokes on the person who picked up! But seriously, stranger danger.
> 
> Cheers!


	7. A Casual Drive

The sky, or lack there of, was pitch black and dark as always. There were no stars just an inky blackness as if someone replaced the complex expanse of sky with a solid black sheet of paper.

Dipper turned his head, cheek to asphalt, to see a long winding road with tall twisted pines crowding the edges. His stalking creature -or whatever it was- seemed to have vanished with the stars. To walk in his waking life. He shivered.

He sat up, dazed, stomach making flips on stale air. He wrapped his arms around himself, screwing his eyes shut against the angry pounding of his head- agh, it felt like he went a hundred miles per hour then suddenly slammed into concrete.

He blinked rapidly, trying to banish the spots from his vision. With the shake of his head, he eyed his surroundings. It was extremely dark with the only source of illumination being the dim billboard lights- wait... two gleaming yellow orbs were rapidly expanding behind him; a dark shadow blared it's horn as if to say _GET OUT OF THE WAY-_

He scrambled quickly to his feet as the huge, hulking machine slowed to a stop before him. It was large, shadowed, but the billboard lights shone a soft yellow on the rumbling vehicle. The huge windows were tinted black as if anticipating a sun that never rose.

With a soft gasp, the side doors pulled apart, revealing three narrow stairs leading into a dimly lit interior.

Dipper took a cautious step, allowing his eyes adjust to semi-darkness.  Once he was fully inside, the doors suddenly snapped shut with a low hiss as the engine roared to life, shaking the dim lights into Dipper's eyes, temporarily blinding him.

As his headache ignited and alarm bells rung wildly in his brain, Dipper crawled into the empty passenger side and sat heavily onto one of the hard plastic seats.

The bus was traveling at insane speeds for it's girth and size, shaking and tumbling through the uneven road. As the lights swung in rythm with the shaking, he swears he could see shadows, tall and human shaped, sitting in the seats across from him, eyeing him curiously.

Feeling more than a little weary, he rests his head down onto the hard plastic seat beside him. This was all very strange and vaguely creepy but he felt more at ease in a metal contraption speeding at unmeasurable speeds than he had in the firm grasp of that crazy dream creature. He shifts his eyes closed- but opens them abruptly as his entire body jumped at a large _CRASH_!

He closed his eyes and tried to calm his racing heart. The bus probably ran over a large rock or something. Everything is fine. Except, instead of landing on the hard plastic seating, he stumbled onto soft leather cushions.

Immediately opening his eyes wide was a terrible idea. The throbbing in his head flared anew in the bright light. The constant shaking and tumbling of the bus-unknown vehicle did not help matters.

Dipper groaned, cradling his head with both arms. His headache was worse in reality than it was in the dreamscape. Why didn't any morphine trigger? He recalled the sweet numbness that washed over him after the whirling of machinery the last time he woke up in pain. Except, he was no where near any machinery. And, judging by the continuous rocking of the vehicle, he probably wasn't in a hospital either.

Cautiously, Dipper opened his eyes. Through the blur of pain, he could make out a vague outline of bars. Huh... A vehicle with bars? How absurd.

_Well, someone has to be driving this thing._

"Hello?" He croaked aloud; his voice was a familiar hoarseness that spoke of many days disuse.

Through the blur of his broken vision, he swore he saw a shuffling in the seat in front of him before a female voice answered tonelessly, "oh. You're awake."

He opened his mouth once more as questions warred for superiority in his fractured mind.

Who was driving? How did he get in a vehicle with bars? Where were they going? He was still in pretty bad shape so why did he leave the hospital? What happened to- Argh!

The pain seared tenfold, scattering his thoughts. He's surprised when words tumble out of his lips, "wh-what happened?"

"You..." Her voice had dropped to a whisper and through the roar of wheels scraping rock, he couldn't catch her words.

"What?"

"J-just what are you."

The question hit Dipper out of left field, "what am I? I'm... I don't know- I'm a kid- I mean, a teenager," he scratched the back of his head, "a human."

Through the throbbing and pain, he swears he could hear something chuckle darkly. He quickly banished the thought.

"Bullshit."

He blinked, "what?"

"Whatever you are and whatever you did in that hospital, it wasn't-" She abruptly cut off but the unspoken words drifted between them.

It had taken him a while but his broken mind finally pieced everything together, "Deputy Brinston..."

Before he could say anymore, the car was brought to an abrupt halt. Dipper laid back, cradling his head against the whirling pain. Through the steady throbbing of pain, he was only vaguely aware of the sounds of doors opening and closing. He turned when the door to his left opened.

Deputy Jenny Brinston looked worn and haggard as if she hadn't slept for several days. Dark rings colored the rims of her eyes. Her pretty face became white, gaunt like a specter. She looked far deprived from her initial appearance back at the hospital.

"Get out," she barked.

He stumbled forward, clumsy like a drunk man, and took several wavering steps outside the car. A vast dark forest of towering pines formed before him, every aspect gave off a terrifying feeling of déjà vu. He could almost see the twin glow of the thing's eyes peering through the thickets of trees. He swallowed the lump of fear in his throat.

A thump of something hitting the floor beside him broke out of his reverie.

"That pack has enough food to last you for a couple of days," she explained dryly, "if you keep to the road, you'll find a gas station. You can ask for directions from there."

Dipper turned to the deputy, "w-wait, the hospital... Is everyone-" A sharp pain blinded him. He held his head in his hands to steady his vision. 

"Everyone is fine," she answered, though she sounded more weary than relieved. Staring absently at him, the deputy gave a long harsh sigh, "here, kid," she tossed something to the ground at his feet. "Some pain meds for that headache."

Before he was lucid enough to thank her, she was already in her car- police car?- about to take off. She rolled down the side-door window, facing him, "kid, whatever you are, you're not welcome here anymore, you hear me? Don't you _ever_ come back to Ashwood. I _will_ shoot you on sight."

Before he could say anything, she sped off, leaving him in the dust. He blinked, once, twice. What had he done in that hospital?

He knew better than to pound his brain for answers. He'd get nowhere and be left with a raging headache for his troubles.

He bent down and grabbed the pain medication from the floor. He twisted off the lid and popped a pill. 

Knowing that it'll probably take a couple of minutes before the pill kicked in, he placed the bottle into the backpack and sat down on the gravel floor. His eyes drooped closed. So much happened in such a short time.

Loud growl accompanied by a rumbling of his bowels stole his attention. He must be hungry, he couldn't even remember what food looked like, let alone how long ago he'd last eaten.

He reached into the backpack, shuffling around in search of food. While flipping through his possessions, he found a large brown parcel neatly wrapped with the words, **PATIENT NO. 73B** , scrawled in near illegible looping text.

Curious to see if the contents of the package could possibly uncover some of his lost memories, he torn through the thin paper. A book, maroon with a large bass hand in the center, revealed itself from underneath the brown paper, a 3 painted black in the palm. The book looked worn, old, and slightly torn at the edges but it felt safe, familiar like an old friend. He placed his small palm on the gold hand, noting the extra finger to the left of his pinky.

Leafing through the pages at random, he found page with a crudely drawn bearded small man with a pointed hat and large sharp teeth.

Sheriff Rowdy's words fluttered to the forefront of his mind, ' _Ol' man Mcgibbins been spoutin' all kinds of crazy these days. Gnomes stealing pies from the ol' bakery,_ ' Dipper flipped a page to reveal a human-like creature with a fish tail, ' _mermaids in the lake near the interstate_ ,' another couple of flips landed him to some huge bat creature, ' _demons with tiny bat wings, the like!_ '

These creatures... Are they real?

A girlish laughter played through his mind like a broken record as he continued to flip. For some unknown reason, tears began to form at the rims of his eyes as his head softly pounded in rhythm. He abruptly closed the book, fearing that continuing would only bring back the pain. Besides, he could always fish through the book at another time.

However, in the process of stuffing book in bag, the book slipped out of his clumsy fingers, falling onto the mossy floor.

With much irritation, Dipper leaned over to pick it up but found that the book had flipped open to a page covered in scribbles and a bright red liquid, vaguely reminiscent of blood.

Intrigued, he brought the book over for closer inspection. As soon as he got a better look, his vision went black.

\-----------------------------------------------

The screaming, it was everywhere as his eyelids peeled back at their own accord. He was back in his hospital room, his blood tiled, gore infused hospital room.

He looked down and around the small compartment with a cold impassiveness. The whole exchange felt strange, as if Dipper was watching through a screen instead of his own two eyes.

When his eyes finally landed on the thing, his blood ran cold and hot simultaneously.

He shivered internally as he felt his false smile widen by some alien force, injured hand extending, fracturing, towards the creature.

It let out a loud angry hiss in response, throwing aside the doctor's corpse, but before it could make another move, it was gone. Vanished. Just like that.

In that split second, Deputy Brinston scrambled toward the fallen doctor, arms wrapped tightly around the lifeless corpse, sobbing.

His eyes, however, did not focus on that sad sight rather, they looked to the ground where a severed head looked back with sightless eyes. With a sigh he did not authorize, he raised his right hand slowly and the head magically levitated towards it's body, melding seamlessly in place. White cheeks flushed with color as the once dead sheriff grasped in a long rasping breath.

A sharp pain in Dipper's head accompanied the action, but the hands continued to move as if conducting an unseen orchestra. The two halves of the nurse found each other when he brought his two hands together, glassy eyes becoming sharp.

As the two newly returned scrambled to collect themselves, Dipper's eyes turned to the deputy and the final lifeless corpse. With a whistle, he causally sauntered towards the two, as if he was not walking on viscera or bodily fluids, and greeted the sobbing deputy with a cheerful, "Hi!"

She looked up at him, dazed, face puffed red with dried blood and tears.

Dipper felt his face cringe with distaste, "I see that you are, uh... Busy, but I'd like to see that meat sack for a second."

Without warning, he snapped his fingers and the doctor gasped loudly. The deputy screamed, scrambling away from the now breathing doctor, as pieces of fallen flesh flew towards their respective spots, melding seemlessly into living tissue.

Turning from the exchange, Dipper levitated a mirror towards himself, and looks into it. His face looks... Normal, normal for a patient living off of IV fluids as substance for little over a month but his eyes... His eyes were black slits tinged with a bright inhuman golden glow. Then he smiled, an unnatural grotesque grin that stretched his facial muscles painfully as the bruises and cuts on his face began to heal in mere seconds, "15 minutes. You owe me another 1,425 minutes, Pine Tree."

Dipper gasped for air in rapid gaping breaths as his eyes flew open. The pain, once leveled to a dull thud, ignited and he could see only bright blinding white, but he didn't care. He was completely, utterly terrified. His nightmares, the blood, the voice, it was all suddenly, unmistakably real.

He scrambled to find the pills, tearing through the pack with shaking fingers. Before he could find the tiny bottle; however, he heaved, throwing up stomach acid. Now his throat burned in addition to his brain, perfect.

Forgoing the search, Dipper curled into himself, wrapping his searing head in his arms. He welcomed the darkness when it came to take him from the waking world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Dipper, how I torture him so.
> 
> Man, I hated writing this chapter. Too many things happening, making it seem disjointed and crudely thrown together. That and I didn't quite proof read it when I was sane with sleep, but whatevs. The next one should be fun.


	8. Remember me?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Return of a certain someone puts Dipper on edge.

Industrial plastic is less volatile than soft earth and grass. Dipper learned this fact first hand when he slammed his head onto hard plastic seating. He cursed with a creative collection of obscenities that would have made his Gruncle proud.

A few shadow people snickered, a soft sound that he could have mistaken for leaves rustling if Dipper hadn't been confined in a closed box hurtling at worrying speeds.

A clear concise thought shot through the cluster of pain and chaos, _Pine Tree, you need to get out of this bus. It's gonna go off road and run down a cliff._

"Get... Outta... Bus," his words were slurred, eyes seeing double. He couldn't quite process the words.

A loud obnoxious sigh reverberated through his mind, _fine, you worthless piece of-_

The words created an uncomfortable dip in his stomach though the sensation was more likely caused by the something large hitting the bus. He didn't notice because it was here that his mind decided to black out.

"You really shouldn't sleep next to the road in the dreamscape, Pine Tree."

Dipper jolted awake, face tilted on soft grassy mud. This was strange because he swore he had been on a bus a couple of-

Without lifting his head, he spotted vague shadow of the bus under the moon except it was bent out of proportion resembling a crushed tin can and capsized on the asphalt.

He sat up abruptly, wiping mud and grass off his face. It was a miracle he wasn't injured. A miracle, or something else.

"You know, some gratitude would be nice once and a while. This is the third time I saved you in two months. Though, to be fair, I probably saved you more than three times. That really should entitle me to your indentured servitude."

Dipper turned to face the annoying, chatty voice, fully expecting to find no one there just as before. This time, however, his eyes landed on a boy. That was not a boy.

The boy's (or not-boy's) skin was dark, shadowed under midnight moon. Hair, a gold messy crown gleaming in thick streaks almost covering the eyes; eyes that were twin amber rings, bright, reflective like a cat's. He looked to be around Dipper's age, but a head taller and better dressed in mild colors. He looked down and around his own body, as if seeing himself for the first time, "like what you see?"

"You look..." Dipper's mind was warring over the right words to describe the not-boy. Strange? Human but not human? "Different."

Thin lips pulled into a wide manic smile, "well, would have shown ya my true form, but your current fragile noodle of a brain couldn't handle it so I let your mind conjure up a form for me."

Dipper bristled at the insult, but he quickly swallowed his indignation. A being capable of reanimation was not to be trifled with.

Said being nodded in approval as if he heard Dipper's thoughts. He jumped up and... Floated. Midair. Laying on his back, legs crossed as if lounging on an invisible sofa. Only the folds of his clothes and black coat tails seemed to adhere to the law of gravity. A lazy boyish grin replaced the creepy one, "Binocular vision, mouth, taste buds! My very own never-before-used meat sack!" he rolled his tongue over newly formed teeth, "I can get used to this!"

"Who are you?" Dipper blurted, curiosity overcoming sense. This was the first he saw another being in his dreamscape, albeit a familiar one, in the flesh and on speaking terms. And probably was his subconscious playing mind games.

"Who am I," the not-boy echoed, obviously amused, "curious little mind, I always liked that about you," then he grew contemplative, his eyes dark and distant, "shoulda known it would get me into this mess..."

"Wait, are you not my subconscious?"

"For a sharp kid, you sure are slow in some circles. No, your puny subconscious has not a smidgen of my vast intelligence and limitless knowledge."

"Ok... Then what are you? Why are you talking to me? How are you doing that?"

"Well, what are you? Who are you, do you know? And why do you like peanut butter and baloney sandwiches, yuck!"

"No, I don't believe this. This is just another one of my terrifying nightmares and I'm just sleeping-"

"Are you sure?"

Dipper's eyes shot open and he nearly jumped up in the abruptness of his waking feeling a sharp sense of déjà vu. The sun was high and pleasantly warm on his face, which was dry in stark contrast the the awful seeping wetness at his back.

He regretted not putting some kind of padding beneath him before he slept the day before. The bandages on his head was throughly soaked, feeling nasty and oily against his head.

In one quick motion, he unraveled the head wrap, releasing a full head of long wild brown hair that fell all the way down to his shoulder blades.

Jeez, he couldn't remembered the last time he had hair this long. Then again, there were lots of things he couldn't remember and long hair was the least important on the list.

"I repeat, are you sure?"

This time, Dipper did jump. He swerved around and saw (Gods, he must be insane) the not-boy from his dream was there, sitting casually on his invisa-couch. The sunlight shone softly on his handsome face which made his skin tone lighter, more of an attractive olive shade rather than a shadowed black, though his amber cat's eyes looked no less brilliant than it had in his dream.

Dipper sat, petrified, as the gears of his mind began shifting rapidly against the unreality. There had to be some kind of reasonable explanation for this.

"You are my subconscious," his rational mind reasoned aloud although everything else was screaming otherwise.

The handsome features contorted into an unsettling sneer, "Are you still clinging to that ridiculous falsehood? C'mon! Let's be real! We both know that isn't true!"

Dipper scoffed, rational mind grasping every which-way for a possible explanation, "yeah, real. That's rich coming from you. A disembodied voice in my head that speaks to me and later takes the shape of a kid. Yep, real equals schizo."

"You mean, seeing me and hearing me now makes you think you are mentally ill?"

"Well... Yeah, I guess."

The not-boy's laughter, though crazy and terrifying, was like bells all sharp with harmonic mirth. Dipper hadn't heard someone truly laugh in a long time (that was not a memory of a kind) and he found that he wouldn't mind hearing that crazy laughter again. Then the not-boy's eyes grew sharp and began to rapid-fire questions.

"What about your memories of how I saved you back at that hospital?"

"Delusions from an all nighter and, probably, from the morphine too."

"How about your healed injuries?"

Dipper shrugged, "I went into a coma the first time. It's not unheard of to go into another one. My injuries were probably healed by time."

"Why would that female meat sack threaten to kill you?"

"I don't know! She's crazy!" Dipper yelled, arms waving wildly in the air, "I mean, she believes in gnomes! Minotaurs! Seriously! That's more insane than you being a separate entity existing in my head!"

"Well, kid," the not-boy reclined deeper into invisible couch cushions, arms pillowing his head, "if you want to delude yourself to kingdom come, more power to ya. But for now, try not sleeping in forest-y places. It's exhausting."

Dipper wasn't sure what the not-boy meant by that, but he'd, for one, would like not to be entirely muddy and disgusting every morning. Pulling leaves off his tangled mane, Dipper pondered aloud, "Well, I could follow the road I guess. Until I find a town."

The not-boy threw his non-existent arms into the air and made a noise that sounded like the concentrated burst from a fire extinguisher, "That would take foreeevvvver! We could be centuries from the next town and-" his eyes grew wide and he jumped off his invisa-couch, and hovered in the air. The unsettling smirk grew to a wide smile that would have looked handsome if it had not shone many more teeth than any normal decent human being should have, "I got it! I'll find the nearest place for us and lead us there! No blindly looking around for meat sacks when I could just-"

His brilliant amber eyes turned sharply away from Dipper and deep into the forest canapé. With a tug (Dipper did not know when the not-boy floated close enough to grab him and was a little freaked about it to tell you the truth), the not-boy pulled Dipper to his feet, "there's a store just a little ways through yonder woods."

"How did you-" Dipper swallowed his next words. The deputy did mention a convenience store just a few miles from here. Maybe his subconscious picked up on that.

The not-boy twitched with irritation as that last thought passed through Dipper's head. Guess he was not yet convinced that he was a shard of Dipper's fragmented mind.

Well, at least the not-his-subconscious was useful for something.

The not-boy bristled at that, his amber eyes flashing a brief bright red before calming back to gold.

Better not to think any further then. Dipper wiped the mud off his pants and kneels to gather his supplies. From the fumbling from the day before, he had not found any cash hidden in the backpack pockets. Well, he probably wouldn't buy anything at the store anyway, just ask for directions to Gravity Falls.

He grabbed the bottle of pain pills and stared at it. After a brief consideration (considering the pounding at the back of his skull), he popped the lid and swallowed another pill, feeling the foriegn capsule glide down his throat.If only it was medication to treat hallucinations, that would have helped him a great deal.

"Ha! As if synthetic meat sack drugs could banish me away! Tough luck, Pine Tree, but you're stuck with me!"

There he goes again, reading Dipper's mind like an open book. Mind reading was one of the many reasons Dipper couldn't quite believe that the not-boy was a separate entity. Another human couldn't read the mind; therefore, it can be reasoned that the not-boy was a screw shaken loose from his mind after Dipper's fatal accident. Speaking of fatal accidents..

"Do you know what happened in my accident?" Dipper asked, hopeful for some real answers.

The perpetual smile thinned into a tight-lipped frown, tone neutral and almost mechanical, "I cannot divulge that information presently."

Dipper raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth to protest, but the amber-red eyes flared dangerously, a low snarl emitting from sharp teeth, "Drop it."

Dipper looked away as if finding something more important to look at other than those deeply unsettling amber eyes. He flinched when he felt a hand (not real) touch him on the shoulder and he turned to see the unsettling smirk reaffirming itself onto the not-boy's face, "c'mon, it's not far."

The journey, for the most part, was uneventful. The in-between was mostly filled by the not-boy's unending chatter. After a time, Dipper completely zoned the voice out, preferring to concentrate on the woodland path before him.

Like the not-boy had promised, the convenience store was not far and sitting in the middle of nowhere. Dipper had to wonder how it was still operating seeing that there were no paved roads leading into it, yet it seemed to do quite well judging from the fair amount of rundown pickups that were stationed in the small parking lot.

He strolled towards the front door, past the parked cars, and made a grab for the handle. A gush of cool air from the A.C. blew in from the entrance causing goose flesh to prickle all over his exposed skin.

He rubbed his arms absentmindedly, staring at the rows of packaged goods and treats-then one caught his eye.

 _Oh my gosh! Smile dip!_ Screamed an enthusiastic familiar voice, _I thought this stuff was banned in America!_

"Ya gonta' pay fer that or ya gonta' stare at it like it's the ten cormanments, boy."

Dipper blinked, suddenly aware that he had somehow teleported and was now holding a pack of smile dip in his hands. Gently, he put the sugary candy back on it's place on the shelf and turned to the cashier, eyes wide as a deer in headlights.

The cashier, a large round man with a shiny bald head, stared at him, beady black eyes glaring mistrustfully.

 _Ask about Gravity Falls!_ The voice of the not-boy urged.

"Ya got shits for brains, boy?"

Blood rushed towards his face and he heard the bell-like laughter as his jumbled brain tried to understand the English language, "um, n-no, just... I need... I need..."

"Speak up, boy," the cashier barked, rolls of sweaty flesh jiggled with the movement.

"Directions!" Dipper blurted, "directions to Gravity Falls."

The eyes narrowed into slits, "what buzinesz ya got with 'em falls'?"

Dipper pulled a hand threw his hair, suddenly realizing how insane he must look with his crazy long brown hair and mud caked clothes. He self-consciously raked his hair with his fingers as he continued, "I-I just need to get there because... Uh... Reasons."

A crooked eyebrow raised giving the man an almost comical look, "what'ere yer reasons, boy, the falls' are af limits."

"Please!" Dipper couldn't help the note of desperation in his voice, though he knew not why. Words tumbled out of his mouth like a mudslide, "you have to tell me! I need to get there! There's something important! Really important! Something really bad is happening over there but I need to find it! I can't remember what or why but I just know I have to get there!"

"Kid, kid! Hold onto tha' mouth of yer's! Christ al' mighty!" The stern man rubbed his double chin for a second, "'ere yuze ta' be a bus runnin 'round yonder but afta' the acident, it don't go 'round those parts no more... But..."

The large man turned, fumbling around a small cabinet full of dusty large books before turning back with a notebook and pen in hand. The man scribbled something into the notebook and torn the sheet off before handing it to Dipper, "'ere's directions ta a hotel south of her' with a black sign sayin' 'Motel,' 'cept the l's ran outta power ways back so we call it the 'Mote.' If yer crazee 'nuff ta go ta 'em falls. 'Em folks would be able ta help ya.'"

"Thank you," Dipper breathed out a breath he didn't know he was holding and pocketed the crudely drawn map. Turning a one-eighty, he walked out the door without another look back.

"May the man Jesus help ya!" The man called after him.

"The man Jesus is on holiday!" Dipper's brain companion yelled back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heh, sorry for the long breath of nothing. I just haven't been motivated to write this I guess even though this chapter was a ton a fun and now it is 5 in the morning. Why I splurge on writing in all nighters? Only a certain dream demon can solve that one. Hope ya'll can understand tha' hella strange accent! I'm not sure what I wanted to accomplish there.


	9. Days When We were Young

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who is that girl?  
> The one with hair like my own
> 
> Her face is so familiar,  
> So beautiful and young.
> 
> Yet why does her smile curve down  
> towards the earth instead of the sun?

Night fell fast forcing Dipper to set up camp in the forest again, much to the not-boy's chagrin.

He is grateful when he stumbled across a large lake, crystal clear and untouched by the elements. It was a stunning sight to see; the mirrored surface shown brilliantly with the health and vitality of the ecosystem inhabiting it, a stark contrast to the murky depths of the lakes in Cali where the waters were as corrupt as the-

_You really should stop with your grumpy talk, Bro bro. You're ruining the mood!_

He chuckled at her endearing words, "Really, I'm only speak the-" he froze, pain splitting his head like tiny knife stabs. Her voice, her laughter rung shrilly in his mind. He held his head in his arms, waiting for the pain to subside.

It was that goddamn girl again! Won't she ever leave him alone?!

He thought of Doctor Alec's words ruefully, _it's not uncommon for the mind to experience auditory or visual hallucinations after extreme head trauma._ Was this truth or falsehood? That not-boy seemed to see it as a falsehood. Dipper sighed.

First the disembodied voice of his subconscious, then the whole events in the past couple of days, now this girl was driving him up a wall... Man, no wonder he was losing it. He wished he could ask Doctor Alec about recovering amnesia patients. He didn't know anything beyond the basic Wikipedia definition but this seemed radically different from his readings.

 _Dipper, are you ok?_ Cheerful tones became a melody of concern as he felt tendrils of long chestnut hair graze his cheek. He brushed them hurriedly aside.

_Dipper! Mom's home! Stop playing with my hair and help me get the groceries in!_

"Mabel, I-" he felt a tug on his scalp as his hands pulled at his own long brown hair, the hair he had thought was someone else's. He froze, running the past words through his mind, "Mabel..."

_Yes, yes, Mabel, it rhymes with table and cable and smable and more!_

"Mabel, I think that last one isn't a word-"

 _Semantics, Dipper. Live a little!_ He saw the blurred image of a young girl with long flowing chestnut hair positively beaming at him. _If smable was a real word just imagine the possiblities! It could mean ending world hunger! It could mean queen of the universe! It could mean-_

"NOOO!" Dipper felt the ice water splash at his hands and skin as he ripped his hand through the lake's edge. He stares, his rippling reflection staring back, the chestnut brown hair long and tangled, white face worn, haggard, and unfamiliar; the face of a stranger. Except for the eyes, those eyes as brown as his hair. For a second he could see a laughing girl in those eyes.

He turned away, his head pounding heavily, "Doctor Alec was wrong, I truly am going insane..."

"I'll say. You've been talking to yourself for quite a while, Pine Tree. Even I'm beginning to question your sanity."

A cold clarity flared bright as if he had been doused in freezing water. He turned to the smug smirking not-boy who sat casually in the center of the small lake, not quite touching the surface.

Blood, fast and hot, rushed over his vision, "What is it to you, oh, Mr. ' _vast intelligence and limitless knowledge_ '? Why are you even messing with me? If you were my subconscious, it would make sense for you to be screwing with me but, if you are the independent being you claim, why are you here at all?"

The smirk twisted, eyes burning dangerously " _au contraire_  what you may or may not believe, I am not stuck here in your miserable excuse of a mindscape by choice!"

"What does that even mean? Why do you always answer in riddles?"

"I do not-"

"Then who is that girl from my dream-"

"She is your sister."

The silence that followed was so devoid of noise that it seemed that the world had stopped mid-rotation.

Dipper felt nervous laughter bubbling to the surface, "haha, very funny. I would remember if I had a twin sister, amnesia or no."

"I never said she was your twin."

"Well, Mr. _I-know-everything._ If I had close family, why hadn't they found me in the month that past by-"

A sudden darkness wrapped his mind.

 _Dipper_.

The voice was old, heavy with emotion.

He turned to see the stoic face of a man with huge ears, thick framed glasses, and graying hair covered by a large maroon fez. He looked cartoonish in appearance but his grim face destroyed that effect.

 _Who are you?_ Dipper heard himself say, his voice sounded younger, small and afraid, _who are you and where's mom and dad and Mabel-_

  _Your sister's safe, it's just- Kid, sit down..._ The man signaled a place on the couch, Dipper numbly complied, _I... I don't know how to tell you this... This kind of stuff... It never comes easy..._

The man swallowed but his face stayed firm, _Kid... Your parents... They're not coming back._

The whole conversation passed in the matter of seconds but he suddenly understood. His parents were rushing his sister to the infirmary though he could not remember why. There had been a truck... And... His heart fell into his stomach with a heavy thud.

"Why, indeed," the not-boy raised an olive hand to his mouth in mock contemplation.

Dipper blinked away the tears, clenching and unclenching his teeth at the chuckling apparition, but his mouth felt as dry as the desert. He remained speechless as the laughing girl returned to the forefront of his memory, his sister, his better half- a crushing feeling pushed his weight downward, collapsing his knees. He heard distant sobbing noises, which he had thought a memory of a sort, before he felt the wetness trailing down his own cheeks.

The not-boy sat up, looking very annoyed by the sudden display of grief, because that was what it was, wasn't it? Grief for parents lost. Grief for someone he should know as well as he should know his own face. But he had lost memory of that too, hadn't he? His accident had robbed everything from him, even his reflection was that of a stranger. And now the grief and pain that was long ago, tore at him anew.

He didn't know how long he laid there, curled into a tight ball of pain and misery, and he would have stayed that way too, if it were not for two strong (imaginary) hands prying him apart and slapping him sharply across a the face, "now is not the time to spew out your disgusting bodily fluids-"

He thrashed blindly at the apparition, feeling a subject to pinpoint his fury and an odd sense of déjà vu, "Why? _Nothing matters anymore!_ Can't you see? Does your so-called ' _limitless knowledge_ ' extend so far?! My parents are _dead_! Grunkle Stan is probably buried with that _goddamn town_ and Mabel is probably dead too-"

"But she isn't! You rotten fool! _Shooting star is not dead!"_

"How would you know!"

"Because I do and if you haven't noticed, I haven't been wrong yet! _So quit your whining and get up!"_

" _You know what, Bill? Fuck you!_ "

Another sharp slap cut across his face clearing his anger enough to see the not-boy's red eyes burning like twin hot coals, voice dripping with dark malice, "I. Am not. Your babysitter. I will not stand for this whining. You will keep your word and I will ensure it, be it with or without your consent. Understand?"

Dipper stared, fear freezing his innards. How could he ever think of this foul monster as his subconscious, hell, even his friend.

" _Answer me!_ "

"Ok! Fine, fine! Sure, you fucking lunatic!"

"Good," the not-boy (Bill?) released his grip from Dipper's shirt, muttering something in the language that made Dipper's ears feel like bleeding and floated off to the forest line. Before he drifted out of sight, he called out, "clean yourself! We will be leaving early tomorrow!"

Dipper fell on his butt, all fight leaving him. His mind drifting towards the not-boy's threat. Who was this creature that cohabited his mind? And what was this promise that Dipper had no recollection of foolishly agreeing to?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woot! Another chapter, short and sweet! The plot thickens! Heh heh. 
> 
> Yes, I killed off Dipper's parents. Yes, I'm evil! Thanks for asking! MUHUAHAHAHA!
> 
> Not sure when I will update next but we'll keep in touch.


	10. Nothing comes Freely

"Dipper? Earth to Dipper. This is Captain Mabel Pines from the Intergalactic Waddles Patrol speaking. Do you read me, Bro-Bro?"

Dipper's eyes shot open, getting a face full of fuchsia-pink pillow. A loud obnoxious giggle erupts from the right side of the room.

"Mabel!" He groans, still groggy from sleep, as he shoves off the pillow from his face. However, with the pillow gone, he sees an abrupt change in scenery.

The grinning face of the not-boy sneers at him in good humor, "Rise and shine, Pine Tree! Things to do, places to be! All the places. All of them."

Dipper nearly jumps out of his skin, "Wha-?" He peered through half-lidded eyes. The world was still dark, the sun barely making an entrance across the horizon, "it's way too early-"

"This is the time your ancestors usually wake to take control of all the available daylight," the not-boy gave a nod in the direction of the sun, "you meat sacks have been spoiled by your synthetic indoor suns."

Dipper turned away. God, he had half-hoped the not-boy would disappear come morning. That Dipper would be able to laugh off his existence. The sleeping bag was so warm and comfortable, and closing his eyes seemed like such a good idea. He closed them, maybe if he ignored the blond apparition... But the not-boy was having none of it, "Wake up, Pine Tree, WAKE UP!"

"Ok, FINE! Stop shouting! Why do you even call me that?"

"Call you what?" The smug bastard was obviously feigning ignorance.

"Pine Tree! That is not my name!" He sat up, glaring half-heartedly at the not-boy- wait... "Wait, what is your name?"

"You already know that answer." For a being who seemed to thrive on attention, he seemed strangely hesitant on this front. Well, Dipper decided, it didn't really matter.

"So, it's Bill?" He asked, recalling the last day's conversation.

"Yeah. Ok, enough questions for-"

"What is this promise I made with you?"

All cheer and sneer fell away from the not-boy's (no, Bill's) face, leaving an emotionless expression, an expression that made Dipper shiver, "That is not important right now."

After a visibly uncomfortable glance at Bill, Dipper shook his head and sighed, "whatever, man, I'll just get up."

Dipper sat up, already hating himself for doing so. Ever since the incident at the hospital, his body had not given an adequate amount of rest and the dull ache of his bones squealed in protest at his every movement. He glared wearily at his present companion, no doubt in his mind that Bill was the cause of all his discomfort. Whatever the not-boy was.

After the evening before, the definition of Bill's existence has been constantly shifting and changing form. At first, Bill was the incorporeal voice of his subconscious trying to mend itself; then, when Bill 'became' corporal, he became the 'not-boy,' a symptom of Dipper's self-diagnosed schizophrenia; now... The not-boy had a name... But every time he tried to come up with some rational, logical explanation for Bill's mind-reading capacities and coexistence in Dipper's mind (and other capabilities like reanimation but Dipper didn't want to think about them), his brain would shut down. He knew that he had known Bill before his accident, but there was still too many holes in the puzzle. It was as if pre-accident Dipper was just as clueless about Bill's existence as post-accident Dipper was. The thought both terrified and intrigued him.

He fumbled into his backpack for some food. He pulled out something that felt like hard cloth materiel to find a crumpled piece of cloth joined to a rectangular piece that retained it's shape. It was wrinkled out of proportion as if someone hurriedly shoved it in at the last minute. It was a baseball cap. Huh, it's been a while since the know-it-all voice made an appearance.

The cap was blue and white with the stylized blocky silhouette of a blue pine tree in the front. It was new, aside from the obvious wrinkles, but the hat felt old in his hands, familiar. _Looks good on you, kid. Keep it. Now get out of my sight before I change my mind!_

Shaking his head of the memory, he pulled his long unruly hair into a ponytail and secured it through the slot in the back (how could Mabel have done regular daily activities with all this... Hair!) then placed the rest of the cap on his head. It fit snugly, as if it was meant to be there.

A little shuffling later, he finally found a plastic package of trail mix (all the food were gas station packages of some kind but he didn't mind). Dipper tore at the tear tab and began munching. Halfway through his meal, he bundled the small package and thrown it, haphazardly, into one of the small zippered pouches in the front for later.

He walked to the shore of the lake, the calm waters making little ripples as his bare feet stepped into them. After Bill had left the day before, he had taken a bath before trying to wash his mud and blood soiled hospital clothing. The blood was impossible to wash off, but, thankfully, he had found a extra pair of clothing in the pack. Thank the deputy for that.

He frowned at the thought of her, blood stained, haunted. His rational mind wanted no more than to deny the incident at the hospital but her appearance had put a fork in his theorizing. How could she get those injuries without some intense bloodbath occurring? Following that same thought track, how did he get blood on his hospital clothes? Sure he had his memory of the insane dream creature stomping into the real world but did that really happen? Or was there another plausible explanation that his mind was shielding him from? The experience felt so real though...

"If you think too hard, you're going to hurt yourself, kid," not-boy snorted, interrupting Dipper's rambling inner monologue. Dipper sighed, it was _way_ too early to form coherent thoughts especially with his head thudding dully. He gave another quick glare at Bill, who only thinned his thin lips in reply, before Dipper walked towards the lake-shore edge. He kneeled down, careful not to touch the water's surface and soak his new pants, he cupped some icy water in his hands, taking a brief calming breath before splashing himself in the face. That was more than enough to wake him up, but, goddamn, it was cold! He wriggled himself of the water before heading back to his small camp ground. He sealed the sleeping bag and forced it into the backpack, feeling ready to start the day's travel.

The not-boy had watched his entire morning procedure with the default expression of boredom, "are you finally done?"

"Yeah, I guess," he stuffed the dry still blooded clothes into the pack. It wouldn't do to leave them here. What if some hiker found them, or worse, that _thing_ from the hospital. His rational mind declined to comment.

"Then let's go!" Bill yelled with enough enthusiasm to fuel a jet. If what his fragmented memories shown were true, _it probably could fuel a jet_.

Dipper followed the strange not-boy with lackluster effort. Bill had strangely bipolar tendencies; all chaotic with manic chattiness and gesticulating arms at one point to completely dispassionate, quiet, and solemn in another. For a mostly quiet introvert, (at least he thought he was an introvert) it was very nerve-racking to say the least.

_Haha! That's nothing! A day with me is much more exciting!_

He looked down at his sneakers with a chuckle. Of course, his sister had been worse, hadn't she.

"You're so slow, Pine Tree! At this rate, we'll never get past the shoreline!"

Dipper quickened his speed just enough to satisfy the not-boy.

The 'Mote' was an ordinary beat up looking hotel building with a bunch of old paint-chipped cars parked in the lot. A couple of people, obviously tourists, were chatting eagerly about some local attraction. Others just stood languidly outside, taking a cigarette break.

Bill wrinkled his nose in disgust, "why do you meat bags insist on inhaling such nauseating chemicals?"

"Hey, each to their own," Dipper answered with a shrug.

"I have half a mind to stab them in the chest."

"Please, don't," Dipper sighed. Though his rational mind was barking 'not real,' he did not want to take any chances, "I don't want to get into the bad books with the local police this early on."

A couple of kids looked up from their game of tag, watching him wearily. As if he was a madman for talking to-

Dipper blinked. Of course! How could he have been so stupid! They couldn't see the floating apparition and thought that Dipper was having a one-sided conversation with himself... This did not help matters concerning his thoughts on his current mental health.

"You know, if it bothers you so much, I could make myself visible to those meat sacks over there. Might traumatize them for life-"

 _No!_ A part of him thought loudly, though he couldn't imagine why not. Wouldn't it prove that he wasn't crazy? Sure, it would traumatize a couple of kids but-

 _No!_ Something deep within him repeated sternly _, I will not subject anyone else to Bill's insanity, least of all children_.

"Ok, ok! Geez, Pine Tree! You're such an old fart!" The not boy whined, reclining back onto his invisa-couch with a sneer, "Well, are you going to head to the reception desk? Or do you want to go somewhere else?"

Dipper opened his mouth to answer but quickly shut it, suddenly and reasonably self-conscious.

"Ya know, you can just answer with this," the not-boy tapped his head, "mind-reader, remember?"

 _Ah, right, Mind-reading…_ A frown formed on his lips as he shuffled towards the reception office. A small almost-fond chuckle came from the not-boy's direction. He decidedly ignored it.

The small reception desk separating customer from employee was worn and old like the rest of the complex. Behind it stood a man, impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit and looking completely out of place in this rural setting, “Hello, sir, may I be of assistance?”

“Yeah, uh, I’d like to get directions to Gravity Falls.”

“Gravity Falls?” His large brows rose high on his high forehead, “Why that is absurd! Why would you want to go there?”

Dipper gave a loud false cough, “Reasons.”

“Well, I believe that I can give you the directions, though I really have to warn you against traveling there. It’s very dangerous,” The man, his name-tag said Drew in a clear font, opened a drawer and brought out a map of Oregon, “Let see… We are here,” he motioned towards a section in upper Oregon, “And Gravity Falls is…”

“Here,” The not-boy and ‘Drew’ said simultaneously as they both put their fingers on the exact center of Oregon. The receptionist quickly withdrew his hand from the map as if it had zapped him. He stared at the map, “Huh, that was strange…”

“Can I borrow the map?” Dipper asked, using his most polite ‘grown-up’ voice.

“Huh? Yeah, sure…” Drew answered a tad absentmindedly.

As Dipper shoved the map into his backpack, he felt a sensation of his mouth in motion, speaking without his brain authorizing speech, just like it had when he was at the hospital room, except, this was his own voice, "oh yeah, I'd also like a room for week, starting today."

He stopped motion mid-zipper. What did he just-

Drew regained his former professionalism, “That will be a total of two hundred dollars, would it be cash or credit?”

“Let me ask my dad for some cash,” his mouth answered with its alien movement.

Dipper half-walked, half-ran out of the office. “What the hell, Bill?” He yelled, loud enough to turn the heads of some smokers. In a quieter whisper, teeth grinding, “What are you doing! I have no money! You know that!”

“Mind-reader remember? And relax, kid, I got this,”

The not boy floated close behind him. “Unless you can magically come up with two hundred dollars-” He grumbled under his breath before he felt his own shoulder shoot out and shove into a tall, heavily-built man walking by, fingers brushing against the hem of the man's jeans.

“Hey! Watch it!” The tall man shouted, teeth gnashing on the cigarette in his mouth.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Dipper hurriedly apologized, eyes growing wide and round, mentally kicking and missing the not-boy, "I literally did not know what came over me."

The man grumbled in response before strutting off.

The bell-like laughter rung in his mind as Dipper hurriedly collected himself.

 _Why did you make me do that?_ His mind’s voice cracked on the words, he was so furious.

“You should have seen your face, it was _hilarious_!”

He felt his cheeks flush pink, _That is besides the point! You could have gotten me, us, killed!_

“Take a breather, kid, I got us some cash. Now you can get us that bed and breakfast!”

He blinked. _What?_

Bill sighed loudly, “Look at your hand.”

Dipper looked down as instructed and nearly dropped the wad of cash he was holding, “WHAT! Y-you!” He whirled around, mind set on tracking down the figure retreating up some stairs.

“Wait, hold on, PINE TREE!” Bill reached forward and placed a (imaginary) hand on his shoulder. Dipper immediately shrugged it off. “Do you really think that he would believe that you snatched that from him by accident?”

_I will just say that I found it on the floor and-_

“Kid, if you go over there, I will use your mouth to say that I stole the money and that he’s a tiny ant at the sole of my foot.”

Dipper paused mid-step, faltering, _You wouldn’t_.

“I could and I would.”

_Th-that’s suicide! You’d be killing us both!_

“Oh, we wouldn’t die,” familiar shit-eating grin back in place, “No. He'd be the dead one in this arrangement.”

Shoulders slumped, Dipper turned around, defeated. _You’re going to turn me into a crook._

A dark chuckle spilled out of dark lips, “No, I didn’t.”

A second ago, he saw the not-boy reclining on his invisa-couch with that painful smile.

In the next, _he looked at a wide, expansive forest full of color and tourists. His hand felt another wrapped around it. He looked up; the world looked so much bigger. So did the old man that stood next to him._

_"Kid, let me teach you a couple of things in life. Just you watch,” Gruncle Stan said beside him._

_"Hey!" Said another, angrier and younger. "_

_Oh, hello, sir. I’m sorry,” the voice beside him said, sounding far older, “I am an old man with old eyes. I did not see you there, please forgive my rudeness."_

_"Oh, that's ok, old man,” replied the younger._

_When the man with the young voice walked pasted them, Dipper turned to the old man. His eyes were sharper than a knife._

_"Ya' see kid?" The old man winked though his thin-framed glasses._

_"See what?"_

_Rough, wrinkly fingers produced a wad of cash, “Ta da! The key is to only steal cash, so the fools can’t trace it back to ya!”_

He opened his eyes to a brightly lit room. _All the goddamn lights were ON_ , stabbing his unprotected eyes. He rubbed them till he saw stars, “ _Damn it, Bill!_ You should warn me before you do that!”

“Where would the fun in that be?”

He was beginning to hate that bell-like laughter.

When his eyes finally adjusted, he spied the not-boy lounging on an actual couch, feet dangling off the sides. A pizza box was haphazardly laying on the side table with more than half of it’s contents missing. It was Hawaiian. Dipper hated Hawaiian. The putrid aftertaste of canned pineapple settled itself on his tongue.

The not-boy’s smile was bright as the lights and spiteful.

Dipper sighed, making an effort to turn off the majority of the lights before walking into the bathroom. It was clean, as in bleached clean you’d find in any odd hotel. Beside the impeccably clean sink was a small packet holding a complimentary toothbrush with a travel-size tube of toothpaste. Dipper tore it open with as much enthusiasm as child with a Christmas present. Once he brushed the pineapple out of his mouth, he took a quick shower (the day’s walk made him stink like a horse).

When he walked out in the complementary bathrobe, all the lights were out save for the dim glow beside the bed. He took the hint and crawled into bed.

As he turned off the lamp, he saw the dark face of the not-boy illuminated by the small dish-moon through the window, the eyes shining white as mirrors.

Dipper found courage in silence, "Hey Bill.”

"What."

"Is my family, Grunkle Stan- Mabel, really alive?”

Bill was quiet for a moment, mirror eyes sharp, "yes." There was no doubt in those eyes.

Dipper nodded, the answer giving him little peace. They were alive in... Whatever condition they were in... But he wouldn't think on that now. He will find them, save them.

He asked his next question, the question that had been nagging him ever since he first woke in that blank hospital room, "what happened to me?"

The overwhelming darkness of sleep answered him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woot! I'm at chapter 10! Didn't think I'd have the attention span to sit and write but man! Writing is fun! Especially Bill's scenes! More fun in the Next one! See ya! (:
> 
> Edit: Accidentally deleted, so I re-uploaded. :/


	11. Dream Manipulation

Darkness caked his vision in spots and corners but he could still make out the tangle of limbs and blood that covered him. He had tried to protect his head as much as he could during the long fall down the cliff but it was not enough to protect his tiny flesh-covered body from the hard stone and the jagged tree branches.

The taste of soot and ash hung heavily within the soft tissue of his throat, but he dared not cough. His throat felt badly scratched and irritated already.

He calculated his other injuries to the best of his ability. His already broken left arm and his right leg jutted out in unnatural angles from where they broke his fall but the adrenaline rush was enough to numb the pain for now. He was sure that every part of his body was covered with injuries judging by the large pool of blood that spewed out of him onto the soft grassy floor. Really, he should be dead by now.

Well, he had jumped knowing full well that he might die in the process, so he should thank his lucky stars that he was facing a brutal amount of pain rather than the alternative. Besides, anything, even death, was better than facing that _thing_ head on.

A soft rasping chuckle echoed to his side and Dipper jerked his head around to face the source of the noise. A sharp crack made him realize, his eyes filling with pain-fueled tears, that another part of him was broken. He really shouldn't be surprised at this point.

"O-over here, Pine... Tree," Bill's voice was barely audible and Dipper had to strain his ears to hear it.

"What.. do you want," Dipper rasped at the sky with as much venom he could muster, unable to face Bill directly without the promise of more pain to grace his already broken body. He did not know how he had gotten the strength to speak through the soot and grim. He was sure that part of him was supposed to be utterly destroyed like the rest of him.

"Ha.. ha... welp, looks like... we're both... caught in a com...promising situation..." It was Bill... Coughing a wheezing, sickly sound. Dipper grew somewhat afraid; he didn't even know the dream manipulator could cough. Since Bill never got sick (to the best of Dipper's knowledge), who could incapacitate the strongest being he knew to the point of coughing? "How's...we make... a deal... help each other... out..."

"A deal’s what got us here in the first place!" Dipper seethed but his strength was rapidly depleting. He wasn't sure how long he could stay conscious. It was a miracle he could even think through the pain.

"Don’t you… pin this on me!" The dream manipulator hissed loudly, painfully, "You-”

Bill cut off, growing very quiet.

" _It_ 's coming..." He whispered urgently, just loud enough for Dipper to hear, "Can't you... hear it..?"

A high-pitched roar resounded in the forest, frightening a murder of crows as they frantically zoomed out of the trees overhead.

Dipper froze. Not even his fall could help him escape it. He was in no condition to run again.

"We... Don't... Have… Much time!" Bill hissed sounding scared and frantic. The ship was sinking, fast.

"What are the terms," Dipper asked quietly, his voice growing painfully hoarse.

"Pine Tre-"

"WHAT ARE THE TERMS, YOU-sonofabitch!"

"If you let me... let me back... into your body... I can... teleport us out."

"Why do you need to be in my body to teleport?"

"IF YOU- can't see..." There was a pause filled by sickly wet coughing noises, "I am in... no position to... protect myself," Bill sounded pained to even admit that fact, " I need... time... to recover... My enemies... won't be… able to find me... in a... human body..."

Sounded like a legit reason, Dipper will give him that, but, at the same time, the journal's warning of 'DO NOT TRUST' flashed before his eyes.

"I will agree only if you agree to my terms-" Dipper replied cautiously.

"Deal," Bill agreed quickly though clenched teeth. Dipper paused for a moment, surprised. Bill would usually protest and wiggle his way into achieving the full benefits of any given deal. He didn’t even hear the terms this time. Just how bad were his injuries?

Dipper let out a frustrated sigh, "Ok, because I can't shake your hand without feeling incredible amounts of pain-"

Bill laughed bitterly at that, though Dipper wasn't sure if dream being was laughing at his sarcasm or at the situation they were facing.

"-I say we set this deal on a metaphorical hand shake."

"Fine! Let's just get this... over with!" Bill agreed hurriedly, the fear and the panic once again present in his voice.

A snap of fingers echoed loudly before a blue flame engulfed Dipper's body and, for a horrifying moment, Dipper thought that the _thing_ had found him and was burning him alive before he realized that the fire did not burn him, nor did it feel painful to the touch. Strangely, it felt familiar and inviting, like an old friend shaking his hand after years of absence.

As the flame slowly seeped into his body, the _thing_ appeared around the thicket of trees; tall, twisted, and terrifying. _It_ 's jaws extended wide enough to engulf a small horse before letting out a sharp scream of joy that pieced the very core of Dipper's being. Fear doubled and rushed throughout his body and his mind began screaming get up and _run, run for your life!_

Before he blacked out, Dipper lay in terrifying silence as several long spindling claws delicately caressed his face, leaving two long trails of blood sliding down his jaw line.

He awoke with a start, heart racing.

 _It was just a dream_ , he told himself, knees drawing closer to his chest, _just another nightmare._

He rubbed his face to wipe away the sleep, right hand tracing twin scars that lined his cheek. The scars had been so thin, he hardly noticed them the day before, but the unconscious movement made him aware of the marks that lined his cheek. The dream was not a dream but a _memory_.

“I jumped…" Dipper whispered, voice still hoarse from sleep, to a silent dark imagined figure of the not-boy sprawled casually across the uncomfortable hotel couch, "off a cliff… What the hell was I- That… thing was there. You were there, too. We made a deal. This doesn’t tell me anything. Why did I run? What happened to Gravity Falls? What is this deal we made before? What were the terms we laid out? How the hell did I get amnesia when I didn’t forget anything after the fall? Who are you? _What_ are you? Why do you _always_ wake me up when _all I need sleep_?"

Even through utter darkness, Dipper managed to make out the not-boy's index and thumb motioning a zipper that closed one side of his mouth to the other before tossing the figurative key. Dipper sighed helplessly, falling back onto his overly soft bed. He stared at the green neon numbers 3:15 AM on the side table. Well, there goes any notion of a good night's sleep, he thought bitterly.

Dipper thought over the new memory the not-boy supplied him. He had jumped… willingly to an uncertain fate. Why? Why would he do that? Was he so reckless in his past that he would willingly jump and break every bone in his body? And he lived! And there was blood _everywhere_ ; he was literally soaked through in it! How the hell did he survive? But he did and he was no where near any news broadcaster. And that _thing_ that found him… was the splitting image of that _thing_ in the hospital. It can’t be… Would that mean that what happened in the hospital really happened? But that just wasn’t possible! There were no such things as dream monsters that came to reality and could split humans in two! There was no such thing as a disembodied voice that could heal wounds instantly or bring back the dead! There was- He held his throbbing head in his hands. His brain was pulling him in two different directions, a tug of war between his rational mind and his fragmented memories.

Dipper turned his head to face Bill. The not-boy glared back, inhuman amber eyes gleaming in the darkness of the room. _Dream manipulator_ his other self had called him, one of the most powerful beings he knew. What did that _mean_? The not-boy certainly had some control over Dipper’s memories, like he had the keys to the doors of Dipper’s mind that he was unlocking bit by bit. He couldn’t imagine why, why would Bill hide Dipper’s own memories from him? And how did he have such control over his mind? Why doesn’t he just open all the doors and give Dipper all his memories back? Why doesn’t he just tell him everything?

He knew that the not-boy could probably hear his thoughts and he wished he could do the same. There were too many mysteries in this room, at the center of which were his family's whereabouts. _Mabel_ , he thought sadly, _Grunkle Stan, where are you?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I wrote this chapter a while back, like, since chapter 2. It was a relic to where I thought this story was heading, seeing that the story morphed into a whole nother beast. I had to tweak this, a ton. Even split it into two. I'm not done with it's twin but I hope this one works. See ya in the next one!


	12. Unexpected Discoveries

On the dawn of the morrow, Dipper's head was throbbing fiercely. He begrudgingly got out of bed, stumbled into the bathroom, and grabbed the pain pills from his bag.

Disregarding the medical instructions, he downed five tablets with a cup of water before stumbling back into bed.

Bill clicked his tongue irritably from his perch on the hotel couch, "as much as I like watching you writhe in pain, I do not appreciate you damaging our meat suit with synthetic human-made chemicals."

"I just took a couple," Dipper grumbled into the hotel pillow, "besides; it’s probably your fault I can't get much sleep. And, just to make this clear, this meat suit isn't _ours_. It's _mine_."

He paused as he realized what he just called his body. He had been in the company of his own head and the not-boy for much too long.

"Whatever you say, Pine Tree," the dream manipulator, whatever-the-hell-that-means, leaned back onto the couch and waved his hand nonchalantly at Dipper as a king would to dismiss a lowly servant, "just don't kill yourself and leave me with that thing, ok?"

“You seem pretty handy against it the last time we encountered that monster,” Dipper grumbled irritably, envisioning the not-boy evaporating the thing with the wave of Dipper's possessed hand.

"I only banished it back into the dreamscape," Bill scoffed, sniffing disapprovingly at the open box of stale pizza on the side table, "It will eventually find it's way out again and give me a raging headache."

Despite his own throbbing headache, Dipper sat up from the bed, "What is that _Thing_ anyway? All my memories of it are weird and hazy at best and you never tell me anything." Besides the distorted and fragmented memories, but thinking of any of those made Dipper’s mind wage a civil war against itself. He’d rather have a civilized conversation.

The not-boy did not respond for several minutes, his unblinking yellow eyes staring fixedly into Dipper's own. Dipper became a bit fidgety.

"It's old," Bill said quietly, his usual high voice suddenly dipping into a low sonorous tone as he sat up on the sofa, amber eyes watching warily out the hotel window, "Very old with a deep winding hunger that cannot be satisfied. Some say that it was born in the void between the stars. And to be swallowed by it is to be engulfed in an eternity of endless darkness. Some perished within it's stomach and some," Bill's golden eyes fell onto Dipper's, "were less fortunate..."

Dipper felt a chill run down his spine. How was he, an awkward teenaged kid with a weird affinity for the supernatural, supposed to fight against that thing? He almost died the last time if last night’s memory was to be believed.

Bill's lips lifted into an unnaturally wide smile at Dipper's terrified expression. He leaned back onto the couch, "Actually, I have no idea what that thing is."

"WHAT?!" Dipper yelled indignantly at the not-boy for lying to him. Then again, he really shouldn't be surprised that Bill, the connoisseur of lies, would lie to him. And, on that note, he shouldn't trust everything the not-boy says.

"If it really was that old and powerful, I would have found a way to dispose of it a long time ago," Bill continued languidly, the usual unusual good cheer once again present in his voice, "No, this thing was created fairly recently by some idiot who didn't know what the hell he was doing."

"If it was created recently," Dipper wondered aloud, recalling last night's dream, "then how did it manage to incapacitate you-"

Dipper shut up as soon as he turned to face the growing inhumanly wide smile that spread across Bill's fabricated human face.

"I don't think you want to ask stupid questions," the not-boy cooed in a sickeningly sweet tone as he leaned forward, facial muscles stretching and contracting unnaturally to accommodate the grotesque smile still plastered across his fabricated face.

Dipper really needed to remember that he was talking to some indescribable creature that could manipulate his memories and actions as well as reanimate dead humans rather than another human boy his age. Dipper really needed to stop getting himself into situations where he needed to remember that.

"So," he nervously cleared his throat, awkwardly aware of predatory yellow eyes following the drop of his Adam's apple. He scratched his head, feeling the headache beginning to come back, he should have taken more than five pills, "...uh... W-Why did you book such a long stay? At this hotel I mean."

Bill's unsettling smile slid off his face (something Dipper was very thankful for) as he rolled his eyes, "think logicaly, Pine tree, that old fart back at the hospital said that Gravity Falls was outta bounds to the public. Other than that, we really don't have a clue of what is going on there right now-"

“-so we hit the books,” Dipper concluded. It was a good first start, they had to gather more concrete evidence rather than relying on mere rumor and hearsay- or at least, that was what he usually did. Dipper furrowed his brows, but why would a being of the higher powers like his imaginary- like Bill- want to go the slow way-

“Hey, don't question me. This is more for your benefit than it is for mine," Bill snapped, "besides, as much as I like waltzing in, guns ablazin,' I don't like going in blind."

"Ok... Whatever you say," Dipper muttered under his breathe as he headed out the door.

\----------------

The town library looked more like the house of a little old lady rather than a government building. A short older librarian manned the reception with horn rimmed specticles. Porcelain vases full of wilting flowers and handwoven dollies were placed in each and every room. There was even a room with a collection of realistic looking dolls. Yeah, Dipper left that room closed. The books in there just weren't worth it.

Books were shelved like an after thought, crammed in varies nooks and crannies. If Dipper hadn't seen the little category planks, detailing the alphabetical order and the genre, he'd think someone just stuffed the books at random.

However messily organized the place was, the presence of books and the smell of fresh pages calmed the pounding in Dipper's head. He remembered long sleepless nights cooped up with a small nightlight and a good book. He remembered cramming for tests in the school library. He remembered finding a strange tome in the middle of a vast forest, it's pages yellowed and weathered by age and-

"Hey, Pine Tree," the not-boy stood (or more accurately, _floated_ ), next to a stack of news papers, holding several in hand, "'think you should stop standing there like an idiot and get on researching?"

"Yeah," Dipper muttered under his breathe, seating himself next to an open computer.

They sifted through their respective pages in a comfortable silence.

Though the web articles mostly detailed crackpot theories or on-the-surface details about Gravity Falls, Dipper managed to find small tidbits of key information in the garbled pile:

A) At dusk, Gravity Falls experienced a heavy earthquake which collapsed the town and created large forest fires.

B) The fires has been described as 'unextigusable,' despite the varies methods utilized.

C) To the best of anyone's knowledge, not one Gravity Falls resident has been found or rescued (Though there was a bunch of people who called claiming to be residents. Those were quickly debunked.)

D) The wildfires creates a perfect circular pattern around the crater of where the town now resides, creating a barrier to entry for rescue workers. How strange.

E) On top of the wild fires, the FBI has a tight lid on entry and exit

It wasn't much and he already knew most of the information already but seeing it on page helped him organize his next step: he'd have to obtain a false FBI badge as well as a nice black suit and (possibly) sunglasses. In other words, he'd have to look the part to join the rodeo. The suit and accessories were easy enough, but how would he obtain a convincing badge?

_Props were always Mabel's department._

The thought of his sister gluing sparkles and goggly eyes to a crudely constructed cardboard ID, brought a furl to his brows. He shook his heard to ward off the incoming headache. Well, he just had to find another way.

Dipper opened the neatly folded map he'd gotten from the hotel's lobby. He eyed the tic that marked Gravity Falls. On the map, the place looked as unassuming as the town just three miles away, just another Oregon town situated at the center of vast forests. Dipper took out a pen (another 'borrowed' trinket from the hotel's lobby) and marked the town he was currently situated, Canyon Lake. (He'd figured it out due to the travel advertisements listed on the back of the map: 'CANYON LAKE, HOME OF LAKE CANYON' followed by the generic image of a canyon with a lake at it's center. Very original name.)

He tapped the pen on page; there were several routes to take.

First, the fasted, would be traveling along the canyon then into the forest surrounding the Falls. However, this was also very dangerous because, at one point, they'd have to cross the canyon to get to the town. Besides, canyon terrain was inherently difficult to traverse for even the most seasoned traveler. And Dipper was no seasoned traveler, if memory served him correctly.

Second was to follow the several winding rivers that connected Canyon Lake to Gravity Falls. This was a much more forgiving trail, though it did mean that they'd have to stock up on camping gear. A major problem was that Oregon had a plethora of rivers and, though labeled neatly on the map, they were easily confusable with another. Plus, the trail had no city stops or landmarks in sight.

Which left final feasible path, the meticulous route by the interstate highway to various towns and landmarks before landing in the dark pine woods surrounding Gravity Falls. That would allow opportunities to restock on food. It was also the easiest to follow, given that all he needed to do was walk next to the freeway between each town and follow the road signs. However, out of the three paths, this definitely was the longest route. Well, at least he wouldn't be traveling alone?

He glanced back at his imaginary partner in crime.

The not boy was flipping pages two at a time, his alien eyes moving at speeds human eyes shouldn't be moving at. In the couple minutes, half a dozen stacks were discarded from the initial pile.

Dipper hurriedly turned back to his map. Maybe he could hitchhike to shorten the journey. Yeah, that sounded better.

As he hastily folded the map and replaced it back into his bag, a paper to the side of his keyboard caught his eye. 'TRAGEDY STRIKES ASHWOOD' the article read in large dark bold lettering. Underneath was a full-page spread of what looked like a small hospital building, it's front door torn to shreds. Half a dozen police cars were parked around the entrance as well as several ambulances. Small black and white people carried the injured out of the hospital.

 _This is the Ashwood memorial hospital_ , Dipper's brows furled. The article was only several days old. Possibly around the same time as his stay at the hospital.

Finally, something relatively concrete to cross-examine (and hopefully debunk) his fabricated memories of the event.

He glanced back at the not-boy with a slide of his eyes. The dream manipulator was still engrossed in his own research to take notice. Or at least, Dipper hoped this was the case.

Even though some rational part of him told him that he shouldn't b afraid of the not-boy watching him (because a figment of your imagination can't hurt you and all that), he still felt comforted that those yellow eyes weren't focused on him. (Also, the not-boy was a mind reader so thinking about hiding things from him was just unproductive.)

Anyway, enough tangents and onto the damn article. He'll worry about possible repercussions later. His eyes scanned the page.

_Ashwood is still recovering from the brutal massacre at the Ashwood Memorial hospital last Friday. Police are still struggling to find a viable suspect due to the vast unusual testimonies._

_Witnesses, injured and uninjured alike, claimed that they were attacked by some 'huge black monster, ten times the size of a large dog.' (Though the size seem to vary by the testimonies of the individuals interviewed.) Some describe it as horse-shaped, some say it's the ancestor of the long extinct direwolf, and some even claim it to be hounds from 'the gates of hell itself.'_

_What eye-witnessed do seem to agree on is the fact that the monster had 'long spindling claws that could tear walls and ceilings to shreds' and 'had long milky white incisors that ripped apart human skin as if it was tissues paper' as well as 'a dark inky black hide impervious to bullets.'_  

Dipper paused, eyes darting over the paragraph again and again, but the words did not change. The damning evidence did not change. They saw it. Each and everyone of them saw that _Thing._ Dipper wiped his face with a palm. There was no denying it now.

' _Police claim that the perpetrator(s) must have spread some unknown hallucinogenic gas to explain away the horror-movie-type monster, though tests on the witnesses after the incident shows no trace of mass inhalation of any sort of substance. Police also cannot explain the serrated wounds which fit the description of bite wounds or claw marks from a large unknown animal nor can they explain the strange black viscous substance that coats the hospital floors._

_Local sherif of Ashwood, Roman Summers had been on the scene of the incident for unrelated reasons; however, he refused to comment on what he had witnessed._

_The FBI were quick to report to the scene, hiding any further evidence from the public and media eyes._

_Though the events surrounding the incident was as strange as the events reported not long after the tragedy of Gravity Falls. It does not change the fact that over 30 people were grievously injured and 14 people were murdered-'_

14 people.

14 people were murdered.

14 people had _died_.

Dipper didn't realize he was shaking until he saw his fists trembling around the page. Rage seared through him, hot, boiling, threatening to explode out of him.

"Whatcha' reading, Pine Tree?"

Dipper snapped around and came face to face with Bill. He looked relaxed, his copper lips pulled into a languid grin. Dipper wanted to punch the not-boy in the face.

"You lied," Dipper clenched his hands, nails biting down into the soft meat of his palms. He wasn't sure why he was so angry, he was sure 75% of what Bill said were probably lies. Maybe it was the fact that the not-boy tricked him into a deal. Maybe it was the fact that fourteen people would never see their families again. Maybe it was the quiet thought in the back of his head that was telling him that this might happen again. That more people will die and he'd be powerless to stop it.

Whatever the reason, Dipper didn't care. He wanted answers.

The not-boy casually looked down at the paper then back up to Dipper and smiled lazily, "you're going to have to be more specific, Pine Tree."

Dipper tossed the article towards Bill, "At the hospital. Fourteen people-"

"Well," Bill's lackadaisical smile stayed in place, "let's revisit the terms here. You said 'you were willing to give up a day of control in exchange for 'saving everyone.' By everyone, you weren't being very specific."

" _Specific_? How could I be anymore specific than _save every_ -"

"Do you mean save everyone in the hospital? Besides the fourteen, there were thirteen other deaths that occurred due to other varies injuries or other ailments," Bill interrupted in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone.

"Wh-What?" Dipper sputtered, blinking rapidly.

"Do you mean everyone within a seven mile radius of the hospital?" Bill continued, without missing a beat, "There was a major car crash just a couple of feet south of the hospital. A mother and two children died on impact."

Dipper opened his mouth to speak but his mind drew a blank.

Bill shook his head, mouth arched into a disappointed frown, "Pine Tree. There is no reason for your anger. I'm a mind-reader, remember? At that exact moment, 'everyone' to you meant _everyone in that room_. So don't argue semantics with me. I might have made a deal with you but I don't have a death wish. It's bad enough that four meat sacks got to witness such a miracle, imagine a dozen. The meat sack military would have surround us by the thousands and we'd be wasting more time running out of their path. Besides, resurrection magic is complicated. It would cost you much more than a day if you wanted me to resurrect all those people."

Dipper looked at Bill, hard. It was unnatural to see the fabricated human face so serious about anything. He crinkled his brows, "There's something you're not telling me."

Bill stared at him for a moment, blinking his owl eyes one at a time. He gave a dry, humorless chuckle before evading the statement entirely, "what have you found in your research?"

"Why don't you just read my mind?" Dipper snapped without faux pas.

Bill raised an eyebrow and a wry grin, "infiltrating the FBI settlement by posing as one of their own is an excellent plan and I have an idea of how to get you that ID badge."

It shouldn't have frightened him, given that Bill professed his mind reading capabilities from the start, but having a person -a person you can physically see and touch in front of you- tell you everything you planned out in your mind... That never really stops being creepy. Dipper cleared his throat, "what about-"

"Following meat-sack made paths? Also a viable option," Bill waggled his eyebrows, grinning from ear to ear. Dipper swears that the sicko was reveling in his discomfort, "though I can help you through the more dangerous paths... For a price-"

"Nope, I'm good," Dipper exclaimed immediately, crossing his arms.

"Ok then, Pine Tree," The not-boy straightened his back and turned away from Dipper.

Dipper watched the not-boy recede back to the stack of books and newspapers when the thought hit him. _Just what was Bill researching?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, it has been forever ago since I've written anything. Please take this super long chapter as an apology! Life is kinda hectic now so I'm not sure when the next chapter will be up but I haven't given up on this! I already have the whole story planned out in my head, but writing it out in a coherent manner is kinda tricky.
> 
> On side note, this is a serious divergence from the show. Bill is not exactly the same Bill from the show, magically speaking... (If that wasn't made obvious by the whole 'resurrection of dead humans' thing) also, this has definitely changed into a more 'worldbuild-y-esc' type of story.... Hahaha... ARTISTIC FREEDOM!
> 
> Well, I hope you enjoyed! Leave a comment if you please and see ya in the next one!


	13. Bed and Breakfast

Dipper's eyes were as dry as desert sand. 

He'd been reading so many articles that the words seemed to bleed together. It didn't help that they just repeated the same couple of facts, theories, and general bullshit. 

Exchanging screen for paper only aggravated the problem. Without the aid of technology to increase font size, Dipper had to squint his already tired eyes to properly read the tiny text. And, boy, were his eyes tired. Non-stop staring at a bright white computer screen for seven hours could do that to you.

Not to mention his thickly pounding skull. Dipper popped another pill. As he felt the capsule slide down his esophagus, he wondered if it even did him any good anymore. 

He glanced back at his unusually silent companion. 

Bill's entire world seemed to be centered around the various books and newspapers surrounding him. At some point, he even gotten a notepad and pen, though Dipper had no idea where.

Dipper massaged his tired eyes; he could take break if he wanted to, right? A small nap wouldn't hurt. It would probably quiet the pounding in his head, allowing himself to think better. And the soft, comfy bean bag cushions he was currently lounging on was so luxuries and inviting. 

He'd just nod off for a couple of seconds then back to work.

He felt something soft thrown onto his face with a soft 'puff!'

A stifled giggle sounded across from him. He could just envision the not-boy holding his sides to contain his laughter.

“Hey!” He yelled angrily, chucking the pillow to the side, his ears and cheeks tinted a faint pink.

“That's what you get for staying up all night and keeping me awake!”

He whirled around to face a girl with bright hazel eyes and long bushy brown hair swept out of her face by a beret. She flashed a wide grin at him, exposing the metal bands wrapped around her teeth. 

It was like looking at a reflection in a mirror... Albeit, a reflection that looked younger, healthier... Prettier.

"Hey, Dipdot!" The reflection echoed, wiggling her eyebrows like miniature snakes, "are you gonna stay inside all day with that dusty old book?"

Dipper opened his mouth, ready to debunk her statement, when his hands brushed across a worn leather surface. He looked down at his lap and saw a maroon book replacing the newspaper he had just seconds before, the same marred book that was stashed safely in his bag. Except, he had no bag with him.

Not only that, but the room had changed. Gone were the bookcases, the computers, and the creepy doll room, even the bean bag he had been lounging on was replaced by a mattress with a deep mahogany frame and a thick dark blue blanket that covered him from the waist down. He was in their room again, their room in Gravity Falls, that meant-

"Whatever. I'm gonna head out, k? You keep doing whatever you're doing, bro bro," the voice grew distant as the door to their room slammed shut.

"Mabel wait!" Dipper scrambled out of bed, rushing out of the room after her. Before he knew it, he was out the front door of their tourist trap/house. 

Even in the day (night? Dreams aren't very straight forward), the forest looked dark and forboding, pine woods swallowing any available light provided by the sun and stars.

Dipper gulped thickly, 

A glimpse of rich brown strands and a soft giggle sang from within the trees. If he squinted, he could almost see her long brown hair swinging back and forth as she bounced deeper into darkness.

Fuck it. 

Mabel was in there, somewhere. Probably thinking she was taking some convenient shortcut. Probably didn't even know what she was getting into. Probably had no idea of the things lurking in the guise of trees.

He swallowed his fear and, for the first time, willingly stepped into the dark. He sourly regretted his decision.

Pure, unfiltered night shrouded the day's sun as quickly as a hand snuffing out a candle light.

He shivered, breathe coming out in clouds. Thankfully, he apparently wears pants to bed.

"Mabel?" the shout came out as a whispered question. Dark shadows shifted and swerved between trees. Fear cleared all thoughts in his mind.

He ran, eyes wide. Nothing was chasing him, but he learned not to stay in one place for too long. Else it would find him again. If not for the flash of hazel, he would have forgotten why he was in here in the first place-

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" The not-boy's voice pierced the fear and panic radiating through his entire body. He didn't stop to think of an answer, running preoccupying his entire mind.

"NO! YOU IDIOT! You're not supposed to be in here!" The voice shouted furiously, but the words were lost to Dipper. Action was the only thing running through his mind. The constant motion of muscle and bone shifting to run. Like a frightened gazelle.

A roar that rose into a terrible concerto somewhere far off behind him. Dipper increased his pace, not daring to look back.

"Wake up! WAKE-"

His eyes shot open, his face sweating profusely. He looked around in a daze, mildly aware that his right cheek felt hot and tingly. 

The not-boy stood before him, right hand grasping his shoulder, left half-raised as if to strike him. Now he knew why his cheek stung.

Bill's face was closer to his than it's ever been before, allowing him to see a close up of the contorted furious frown, eyes glowing a bright crimson.

As Dipper stared up at the not-boy, a flash of fear shivered through him. Just what did he do to make Bill so angry at him?

In answer, the not boy released him, crossing imaginary arms. Bill loomed over him and spoke in a quiet baritone, "that's a very dangerous thing you did there, Pine Tree."

Dipper furled his brows, fear turning into confusion, "Done what? Sleep?"

"YES! SLEEP!" The not-boy flung his arms up at the last word, "do you have ANY IDEA what you did-"

"No! I haven't a clue!" Dipper snapped back, he could feel the headache throbbing in the base of his skull. It was doing nothing to help improve his mood, "what the hell does me taking a short nap have to with anything?"

Bill sighed long and hard. He narrowed his disappointed eyes at Dipper, a perfect imitation of his middle school teacher when he had asked several stupid questions that had obvious answers. The not-boy opened his mouth, then closed it with a shake of his head, "nevermind."

Dipper just had it with Bill's cryptic unfathomable attitude and riddles. 

"Look here," he fumed, "Why can't you ever give me just one straightforward answer-"

"I did, Pine Tree, you just refuse to figure it out-" 

"ITS NOT STRAIGHT FORWARD IF I HAVE TO FIGURE IT OUT!"

A loud growl interrupted the both of them before either of them could continue the argument. Fear coursed through Dipper before he realized that his stomach was vibrating the noise.

Bill stared at him, blinking his owl eyes, before throwing his head back for a hearty guffaw. He held his fabricated stomach, hiccuping with laughter as he drifted higher than usual into the air. 

Dipper frowned (he refused to admit that he actually pouted), but he gave in to the command of his rumbling stomach and stood up.

He checked the owl-shaped clock on the wall above the door. It was 7:30 pm; he missed both lunch and breakfast now that he thought about it. It was a wonder he didn't collapse with starvation. 

Eating snacks wouldn't satisfy him this time and he didn't want to eat anymore of that retch-inducing pizza. What he really wanted was some warm food fresh from the pan. What he wanted was pancakes.

He walked out to speak with the kindly old librarian; she hadn't left the library the entire time. Dipper wondered if she lived here. 

"Oh, you'd want the diner 5 minutes from here," she said with a distant look in her old wrinkled eyes, "my husband used to take me there all the time..." 

He thanked the librarian (though he was sure she hadn't heard him) and stepped outside, noting the sudden darkness that shrouded the town. He shivered, imagining shapes in the woods.

To distract himself from the dark wilderness that surrounded him, he took out the remainder of his cash and began counting the crumbled bills. It was important for him to know how much money he had on hand, to see-

"Don't worry about money. If you don't have enough, we could just pilfer some more from those meat sacks back at the motel."

Dipper clenched his teeth, rubbing his swollen cheek, before continuing to count. $376. He stared down woefully down at the cash in hand. They had stolen over half a thousand from some unsuspecting person. That w-

"Oh, Pine Tree, don't act all self-deprecating. The guy actually stole that money from drug dealers. Anyway, you're gonna pass the diner at this rate."

Dipper paused, turning his attention to the brightly lit safe-haven. The building wasn't much to see but the delicious aroma flowing from opened doors was enough to give him pause. He pocketed the cash and headed in.

The diner was fairly small, only housing seven booths and a bar, but it was nearly packed. Luckily for Dipper, a family of four had just finished their meal, allowing him to occupy one of the booths. He was seated by a nice, plump-looking woman. The not-boy sat across from him, draping himself comfortably over the seat and table.

Browsing through the menu, his stomach instantly found something delicious to fill it. Blueberry chocolate-chip pancakes. The description alone was enough to make him salivate. 

"Hey, Pine Tree, can you order me a pie?"

Bill was leaning over, eyes staring intently at the menu. He was close enough to butt heads. Dipper awkwardly leaned back on his own seat, "what-" He paused, remembering himself, /what do you mean? Can you even eat it?/

Bill smiled mischievously at him; this close, the smile was doing strange things to his stomach, "wouldn't you like to know?" The not-boy leaned back onto his plush seat and repeated his demand, "get me a... Cinnamon butterscotch pie. Cream on the side."

Dipper rubbed his swollen cheek, though he wasn't sure the heat was entirely from the dull pain. Why the hell was he blushing- better not complete that thought. Not for the first time, Dipper felt immense frustration that he shared a mind space with a mind reader.

He raised the menu to cover his face in a futile effort, but, if Bill thought this strange (strangely hilarious), he never commented on it.

Dipper opted to stare out the window to distract himself, noting dimly several dark shapes destroying what looked to be a trash can. For his sanity's sake, he sincerely hoped they were wild dogs.

"Hello, sir, may I take your order?"

He whirled around to face a young red head woman in her mid-twenties. She was dressed in dark navy overalls and red blouse. The country outfit combined with her messy bun suited her very well.

Dipper stared at her for a moment, suddenly realizing that he hadn't drunk any water for the past eight hours. It was not the fact that she was pretty, well, she was in her own way, but... He shook his head, "b-blueberry pancakes and orange juice."

She scribbled it down on a notepad attached to her hip, "Will that be all?"

The not-boy gave him a steely glance, Dipper blurted, "and a cinnamon butterscotch pie, if you please. With cream on the side."

She added the pie, "is that all, sir?" 

Dipper nodded and she left without another word.

Dipper wiped his face with both palms. The motion was becoming a common occurrence.

The not-boy planted his fabricated feet on the table, "So, what's up with you and redheads?"

Dipper glared at Bill through his fingers. He actually had no idea why redheads made him feel like a blubbering fool, it was just- an image of a red-haired teen flashed before his eyes. Though she was dressed like a lumber jack- plaid green long sleeves with dark blue jeans- the outfit only amplified her beauty.

/Wendy/ his blank mind supplied him.

He was so damn sure if she had not been reading that newspaper so intently she would have noticed him watching- she turned away from the paper, setting her gaze on him with a lazy grin- that turned into a wide crazed smile.

"Sir, are you ok?"

Dipper blinked with wide eyes, vaguely noting that he was halfway out of his seat, ready to sprint. Distantly, he heard his fabricated companion chortle with bell-like laughter. Cheeks burning a furious red, he resumed his place before muttering, "nothing's wrong."

She eyed him with a small smile- a smile that brought shivers down his spine- before handing him his juice. Dipper accepted the orange juice with some measure of grace, but his attention was immediately stolen by the next item she carried.

Pancakes, the most glorious, decadent pile of pancakes he had ever seen. Dipper stared at the hot plate of cakes as if they were the first real food he'd seen in years. Granted, the pancakes were the first real meal he'd seen in many months but the fact could not alter the wonderful, wonderful smell of melted butter and hot blueberry juices wafting off of the dish. His eyes followed the descent of the dish from server to table, hands already grasping the fork and knife in either hand.

The waitress giggled as she handed him the plate, "you sure love your pancakes, don't cha'?"

Dipper did not even process the words. His mind was too preoccupied by the delicious combination of sweet, sour, and savory exploding in his mouth. He closed his eyes as he chewed. Yep. The pancakes were pure bliss as he expected.

A soft chuckle brought him out of his second of heaven. He turned to the waitress, the laugh lines around her eyes were prominent. She placed her notepad in her apron, "Not from around here, are ya?"

"Yeah?" He said through a mouthful of wonderful pancakes.

"Well, you picked a great time to visit Canyon Lake! We're having our Semi-Annual Founders Day festival tomorrow!"

Dipper's brows furled as he swallowed, "Semi-annual?

She shrugged, "people can't agree on the day our great great far-removed grandparents founded this town so we just have two Foundation days."

Bright multicolored lights flashed through his mind like strobe lights. He closed his eyes, he could almost feel a hand grabbing his. It was sticky- probably covered with the sugary remnants of cotton candy, yuck!- and small but it had a surprisingly firm grip, "Come on, bro bro!"

"Coming Mabel!" He shouted as his eyes scanned the crowd for /her/-

"Are you ok, sir?"

His eyes snapped open. The waitress was looming over him, her eyes shining with concern. 

"I'm fine," He stated with the shake of his head. He stared up at the not boy, who, in turn, was watching him with a curious expression. The pie and cream was placed on the table but the not boy had not touched it.

"Ok, then I will leave you to your food," she said hurriedly before skittering away, probably to aid other customers.

After she left, Dipper resumed his pancake eating with much less fervor than before.

"You frightened her," a quiet voice spoke from across the table.

Dipper finished chewing before looking up, "What?"

"You scared her," the not-boy repeated in that same eerily quiet tone.

Dipper shrugged, before taking another bite, "I sorta zoned out right in front of her, it would scare people, I guess."

"Huh," The not-boy crossed his arms, watching Dipper eat with an unreadable expression.

Once Dipper had finished his meal, he noticed that the not-boy had not touched his pie. He frowned, "why aren't you eating your pie."

Bill shrugged, "Not hungry anymore."

Dipper glared at him before letting out a sigh, "Ok, I'll bring it home, but," he jabbed a finger at the not-boy's surprisingly toned chest, no, he was not jealous, "you better not make me eat this pie. I hate cinnamon."

The not-boy smiled mischievously, oh, he was in for it-

"To go?"

Dipper turned to the waitress, immediately replacing his hand to his own chest, "Y-yes."

She picked up the plates, handing him a take out bag and the check before bustling off.

"Yep," the not-boy popped the 'p,' "she thinks you're a bonafide schizophrenic."

Dipper glared at his companion, /And you're not helping!/

Once he wrestled the pie in the small plastic container, he left cash and a generous tip on the table and headed out the door.

As he walked towards the 'Mote,' he noticed a rustling in the corner of his eye. 

What seemed to be a small horde of tiny men with tiny pointed hats was surrounding a trash bin. Curious, Dipper was about to take a step towards them when a strong hand gripped him firmly by the shoulder, halting him mid-step. 

He turned to face Bill. The not-boy had visibly paled. Dark olive turning to a light tan shade under the street light; beads of sweat pulling on the skin. Bill's gripped tighter, almost tearing through the thin fabric. 

Dipper pried the hand off of him, "What are you-"

Bill covered his mouth and shoved him forward, "keep moving."

After several blocks, Bill relaxed his grip and let Dipper go.

They walked quietly side by side before Dipper broke the silence, "Those were gnomes."

"Yep."

Dipper swerved his head towards Bill, "why are you so afraid of them-"

"It's not them I'm afraid of!" Bill snapped through clenched teeth.

"Then what are you afraid of?"

The not-boy was quiet and stayed that way when they reached their room. Locking the door behind him, Dipper took out a bottle of water and began chugging it.

The not boy surveyed the room with a frown. He faced Dipper, "Pack up, we're leaving."

He nearly choked on his bottle, "What? Now? It's-" he looked up at the wall clock, "It's half past eight!"

"I don't care, we're leaving-"

"I'm not gonna spend another night in the cold wet woods-"

"You're gonna do a lot of that in the future, better get used to it-"

"No. We're staying. I want to go to that festival tomorrow. I triggered a memory by the mere mention of it, I want to go-"

"YOU IDIOT!" Bill's eyes flared red, "It's not about what you want! We have to leave. NOW!"

"I refuse," Dipper said with steadfast resolve.

Bill's eyes blazed and, for a second, Dipper felt an immeasurable amount of fear. This being was powerful and though Dipper had been on his good side for a large portion of the journey, he knew that the not-boy could be hell if you so chose to look at him funny.

But Dipper needed to go to the Founder's Day celebration. The memory triggered by the mere mention of the festival was only a fraction of the entire thing. There had been something important hidden within it. Some key clue pertaining to the town's current troubles. Or something to that respect. 

He forced himself to glare into Bill's blood red eyes. He knew that the not-boy could read his mind and he challenged Bill to overthrow him.

The not boy looked at Dipper for several tense minutes, before closing his eyes in quiet defeat. He floated to his regular spot on the sofa and sat down, "very well, but you will not enjoy the event tomorrow. I assure you."

"That is for me to decide," Dipper answered quietly, but the not-boy had completely ignored him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another long one. Hope you liked this chapter. The first part was a pain. Did not want to come out. The second part was a diarrhea of words. Yep, I love me some blueberry pancakes. Yep. I just compared writing to constipation and diarrhea. I am a child at heart.
> 
> Btw seriously feel Library Dipper's pain, eyes feel like they're gonna shrivel up in my skull.
> 
> Welp, I hope you enjoyed! Leave a comment if you please and see ya in the next one! It's sure to be one heck of a Ferris wheel!


	14. A Carnival of Dreams

Dipper's mind was in a whole new world of pain. He could barely move, even his eyelids remained tightly closed. It didn't help that he hadn't been able to sleep for hours, due, in no small part, to Bill.

The not-boy had been chattering, non-stop, in Dipper's head for hours on end. He'd expect that if he heard it long enough, he'd get used to the sound, even be lulled to sleep by it, but this was no such case. Everytime he was on the cusp of passing out, the not-boy would change pitch and tone in such a way to wake him from his half-sleep state.

He had tried everything, slapping a pillow over his head (though that didn't work at all because Bill spoke directly into his mind), pleading with the not-boy, and screaming at the not-boy to just shut the fuck up and let him sleep, but nothing worked

He was so exhausted, so frazzled, that, at one point, he even contemplated slamming his head against some hard surface just to pass out. (Though he quickly shoved that thought out of his head.)

And Bill hadn't stopped.

He swore, if he had the capacity to move his body, he'd strangle the not-boy, fabricated or no. But for now, he just laid there, unmoving, listening to the endless chatter that came out of the not-boy's mouth- suddenly, miraculously, it stopped. Holy shit, that silence is defining.

Finally, time for some shut eye. He could feel his eyelids grow heavier as his mind began to drift towards the-

"Kid, if you don't get up now, you're gonna sleep through the festival."

He sprung out of bed so fast, he popped several joints. He could see the sun though the membranes of his closed eyelids.

Another bout of crisp, sharp pain shot through his system. Quickly, he grabbed the pills on nightstand, pouring the rest of it's contents into his mouth. There were only two pills left in the bottle. He frowned.

Great, now he had to visit the drug store for more.

He tentatively got out of bed, brain swirling as he stood up. The not-boy looked at his struggle with a smirk. Dipper gave Bill a glare in return.

Grabbing the cash and his bag, he stumbled out the door and into... A forest? Dark pines loomed over him for half a second, before he snapped back into reality. He blinked. What the hell?

He turned around, trying to make sense of his surroundings, before his eyes landed on the not-boy's face. He looked worried, but only for a second, before the face morphed back into it's lazy smile.

 _Coffee, he needed drug store coffee,_ he thought as he stumbled out of the Mote and into town.

The dawn shone brilliantly on the sleepy town, though some denizens were up and about. Especially around the local 24 hour convenience store.

He stumbled past open glass doors. Now the thing with old town convenience stores, they like to copy all those old 90's movie renditions. In other words, you've seen one, you've seen them all.

There was an young teen manning the cash register but he seemed more preoccupied with his smart phone than he was with his customers. A- what looked like- 50 year old soft drink stand stood at the very back of the store, next to the functional semi-modern coffee maker.

Dipper made a beeline to the coffee stand. After retrieving a freshly brewed cup of coffee, he looked around the medicine isle, finding a bottle of aspirin. He dropped two bottles in a discarded basket he found and, after brief consideration, he dropped in a candy bar too.

By the time he headed out the store, festival preparations were well underway. Bright balloons, circus tents, and concession stands were already making an appearance. To the corner of the library, parade floats were being pumped with air, ready to prowl the streets. Looks like there will be a lot of traffic on the streets today, not that it really concerned him any.

Dipper found a quiet stump to sit. With shaking hands, he about popped two pills into his mouth when he felt a hand on his own.

"That's enough," Bill said quietly, "we have enough things to worry about as it is."

Dipper gave him a weird look before going back to sip his coffee. Sure, he was going a little heavy on the drugs, but... But... He looked at the pills in hand. Five white tablets shone dully in the morning sun. He closed his shaking palm over them. He was being delirious, not thinking properly. What was the recommended daily dosage? He was sure that he probably surpassed it days ago.

Shoving the pills in his pocket, he stood up, patting his pants down. All he needed to do was busy himself with something so that he wouldn't- he rose his head. Darkness clouded his vision. He blinked several times.

Stark darkness invaded the once sunny day, as if some great being above pulled the light switch off. He moved around, hands extended outward to stop him from running into a wall or something. His hands found a thick tree trunk and right before his eyes, the pine forests began sprung up, dark twisting trees looming over him.

He felt like screaming but he clasped both hands over his mouth. What was happen-

"Pine Tree!"

He turned to face the voice. Bill's hand grasped his shoulder in an iron grip. He looked afraid, "what are you doing?"

Dipper whirled around, taking in the morning scenery. He was standing in the middle of a large crowd of people. The festival was in full swing.

Floats were being paraded around. Trumpets were playing some national tune. Speakers were yelling 'hot chocolate, popcorn, chocolate popcorn, get them here!'

"Cotton Candy!" Screamed a young girl beside him. He whirled around, hoping for a glimpse of his younger sister, but, instead, looked into the face of a young stranger.

Bill laughed, "seeing shadows wherever you go?"

"Shussh," he slurred from sleep deprivation. His eyelids felt incredibly heavy.

Suddenly, he felt arms wrap around him, keeping him upright. He looked around, coming face to face with Bill. He hadn't been aware that he was about the fall, had the not boy not held him up.

Though it was mostly Bill's fault that he was in this situation in the first place, he could not help feel a moment of gratitude for the not boy.

"You better not sleep on me, after all the hard work I did trying to keep you awake."

The moment was gone. He sighed, _Bill can you please tell me why you had to take away my sleep for the night?_

Bill ignored him, letting go of him as soon as he was able to stand on his own, "This is the trigger you were looking for, yes? Well, are ya feeling anything yet?"

He looked right to left, trying to find something interesting to draw his memory out.

 _Not yet,_ Dipper mumbled in his mind.

"Then why don't you head over to that snack stand an order a drink."

 _Duh_ , he was thought, mouth feeling dry at the mention, _I already ordered a coffee_ \- he looked at his hand. The coffee was gone.

"You mean, this?" Bill produced Dipper's coffee cup and took a sip. He wrinkled his face, "yuck! Why do you like this stuff?"

"Give me that!" Dipper grabbed the cup outta Bill's hand, but stopped before taking a sip, staring at it curiously.

The not-boy rolled his eyes, "don't be so afraid of some saliva!" Then, without warning, he spat into Dipper's face.

Dipper wiped his red face with a coat sleeve, "what the heck-"

Bill chortled as he began floating away.

"You come back here!" He yelled, turning a couple of heads as he began to run after the fabricated human.

By the time the not-boy stopped 'running,' Dipper felt the air sucked out of him. He put his hands on his knees, panting in front of the large scaffolding, when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Watch this," Bill whispered. He felt the breathe tickle his earlobe and felt his face flushed further.

He looked up and saw a well-sized circus tent. He turned to Bill with a quizzical look.

"Keep watching," Bill said, snapping his fingers.

Suddenly, the four wooden poles supporting the tent, began to tilt and fall, tangling the small Christmas lights that was draped over the roof of the tent. The four large poles somehow fell into each other and stabilized into a pyramid shape, lights tangling into some cartoonish approximation of an eye. Screaming could be heard coming out of the tent.

Dipper stared, dumbfounded.

Bill licked his thumb and squinted as he extended his thumb towards the top of the striped pyramid, "hmm, not exact but it will do."

Dipper stared at the not-boy, his face pasty with bewilderment, "Bill... Did you do that?"

"Yes," Bill gave him a crooked smile, "doesn't it just _illuminate_ your day?"

Dipper's mouth suddenly went dry as he met the bright neon yellows of Bill's alien eyes. Suddenly, Dipper laughed, loud and full of mirth. He didn't know why he laughed, the pun was terrible, maybe he finally went insane, but he couldn't help it. Shortly after, he heard a bell-like laughter join him.

They laughed until ambulances and police cars showed up. He felt a thug on his shoulder and a whisper in his ear, "let's go."

They ran back into a crowd of people, breathless with laughter. People were staring but Dipper didn't care. He laughed until a thought hit him.

Bill ruffled the cap on his long unruly hair, "dont'cha worry, kid, no one got seriously injured. Though that's a shame." The not boy said that last sentence almost ruefully.

Dipper looked up at his floating partner. The not-boy had kept the humans safe... For him. That was weird. He opened his mouth to ask, "Why?"

"Hmm? Well," the not-boy didn't look at him, scratching a cheek with a long olive finger, "you seemed down since you woke up at that hospital, with remembering the deaths of everyone you care about and all, so I thought to cheer you up-

Dipper felt his brows reach the sky. That weird pyramid stunt was a sorta gift for him. He narrowed his brows, "what's the real reason?"

"-you were on the verge of sleeping," the not-boy continued with a smile.

Dipper smiled back, "What's it to you?"

Bill opened his mouth to answer when he suddenly snap his head around, yellow eyes bright and fierce, "It's close, can you feel it?"

"What-" a flash of brown hair caught his attention.

Instead of the not-boy, a girl with silver teeth (braces?) and warm hazel eyes greeted him with a smile. She wore a bright pink sweater with a rainbow stitched across it.

"-so yeah, I was thinking- did you even hear what I said?"

"Uh, yeah," he held his head in his hand.

Furled brows watched him with concern, "are you ok, bro bro?"

"Yeah, Mabel, go on," he felt as if there was a fog in his brain, clouding all coherent thought.

"Kay, bro, so, like I was saying-" Mabel chattered on about school and particulars, about friends and boyfriends, the usual stuff.

He turned his attention forward, watching all the parade floats dancing across streets like some chaotic unorganized choir. Geez, who thought to put the big floats next to the small ones? And all the dancers weren't even synchronized. And there was this awful screeching noise. Where the hell was that even coming from?

He advert end his attention, focusing on the crowd of people sitting around. They weren't even watching. Well, figures.

He looked down, coffee cup in hand.

"Pine tree," the not-boy spoke with concern, "what have you done?"

"Dipper," Mabel spoke with concern, "where are you going?"

"Huh?" Dipper blinked, putting hand on head. His head was pounding fiercely. Like he was having some kind of weird double vision, he heard the not-boy and Mabel speaking simultaneously. In his vision, he saw a parade with disorganized floats, but at the same time, he saw the snack stands and game booths. He felt the backpack weighing heavy on his back, but at the same time, he felt nothing on his back.

He was walking in memory and reality simultaneously.

"Pine tree!" The not-boy yelled after him.

"Dipper!" His sister yelled after him.

Why were they yelling at him? What was he doing? He felt a fog invade his thoughts. He felt his legs move from underneath him. Why? Didn't he want to find Mabel? There was something important he was missing. Something important he was forgetting. He furled his brows, scanning the simultaneous crowd, catching a glimpse of red hair. He froze. Is that _her_?

"Jus a second, Mabel.." He slurred, half-conscious.

"Goddamn it, Pine Tree," the not boy cursed.

"Dipper!" Mabel yelled, "where you going?"

Augh! This duality was seriously taxing on the brain. His head screamed at him to sit down, to find a corner and sleep, to drink coffee, to yell for the not-boy's help- but his legs kept moving.

She was there, in both worlds. Maybe, if he reached her, he would have answers. Maybe, if he reached her, he would finally gain the courage to ask her out.

"Pine tree," Bill clenched his teeth, but he paid him no mind.

"Dipper!" Mabel cried, but he paid her no mind.

He should run back, his sister needed him, something was wrong- He extended an hand and grasped her shoulder.

The red-headed waitress from small dinar turned and screamed, "who are you? Are you following me!"

The red-head from his dreams turned and smiled, "what's up, little guy?"

He wanted to turn around but he couldn't. Instead he smiled awkwardly, his cheeks tinted pink, "oh, it's-I-Uh..."

Waitress took two steps backwards, "stay back."

Wendy took two steps forwards, "yeah?"

Maybe he wasn't ready for this, "I like you! Ever since middle school!"

Both of them looked at him in a simultaneous expression of surprise, "what?"

His face turned beat red, "uh..."

The waitress jumped away from him, "Stay away from me, you freak! Security!"

Wendy, scratched her cheek, "That's real sweet, Dipper, but I don't think of you the same way."

"Oh..." He felt hot and cold all at once. He had to go, run away from her-them.

Suddenly, the fog cleared in his mind. Memories of that day began pouring in. He had forgotten, forgotten this very important thing. His eyes widened, cheeks devoid of color, "Mabel."

The world went dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, this chapter was a pain to write. Sorry it took forever. Leave a comment if you like and see ya in the next one.


	15. A Carnival of Nightmares

She was gone, neither here nor there.

What was he thinking? Why did he run off and leave her alone?

Trees sprung about him, tall dark pines winding up and wrapping around the sides of his vision. It was so cold.

"Mabel?" He cried out, "Mabel!"

She wasn't alone, at least, alone in the unknown. Calm down, Dipper, she knows this town like the back of her hand. They grew up in this place, in the back woods, in the strange and unnatural. She couldn't get lost in some measly town carnival.

The cold and the dark squeezed his heart as he tried to spy her small form past the dark pines. Bright yellow eyes stared back at him. He shivered.

"Mabel!" he called out, his voice growing hoarse, "where are you!"

He only took his eyes off of her for like five minutes. There was no way for her to have wandered off very far for a short five minutes! He even heard her call out to him- why didn't he go to her when she called? Why was he so distracted by something so small as a crush.

The creature crawled out, standing to it's full height. It was almost as tall as the trees that surrounded it.

 _Funny_ , Dipper thought in his panicked haze, _I don't remember it being so tall-_

“Mab-”

He felt a hand grasp him by the shoulders and swing him around roughly, "Pine Tree. Get a hold of yourself."

The world seemed the whirl to a stop. He took a look around, noting the sudden shift in scenery. Instead of the large floats and a crowd of dark trees, there were the faces of strangers staring at him as if he just lost his mind. Of course she wasn't here... It was just a memory.

"Just a memory, yes," Bill echoed, "just breathe."

He realized that, at that moment, he was hyperventilating, grabbing onto Bill's shoulders like a lifeline. He took in a deep breath, closing his eyes in an attempt to calm his rapid heartbeat.

"I was there," he began rambling, "I remember, I was there and I left her. It was stupid but I did it because I was chasing some stupid crush and I left her alone for like five seconds and she disappeared and-"

"Shut up," Bill barked just as some unknown woman screamed shrilly, "MONSTER!"

Dipper shut his jaw so quickly he felt his teeth grind together. The not-boy's eyes were blazing, "you idiot."

There was another scream, but louder, shriller, and horrifyingly familiar. A dark mass made it's way through, walking through stands easily as if they were made out of paper.

If there was any color in Dipper's face, it would have vacated the building at that very second.

A creature, the same creature from the hospital, stood there on two dark hind legs, extending it's long jaw to reveal long jagged red teeth and a long black tongue. It was tall, taller than before, almost the height of a small one story house. As if it grew from the meat of its victims from the hospital. As if it grew from Dipper's fear and guilt for Mabel's disappearance.

Bill cursed something intelligible, his own dark face paled significantly.

Without looking at the not-boy, Dipper cried, "Bill! Do something! Banish him to the dreamscape or whatever you did before!"

"Don't think it'll work this time!" Bill answered, shoving Dipper into the herd of running people, "Run!"

They ran as the demon creature screamed from behind them. He tried to block out the cries for help. Tried to block out the gun shots that would enviably fail to wound the beast in any way. Tried to block out the screams, the sounds of flesh tearing off of bone, the feeling of blood and gore spraying on a leg or an arm.

The large crowd dispersed into the trees, each going their own random direction. Dipper headed deeper into the surrounding pines, if not for the loud screams, he would have imagined that he was in one of his dreams.

Pain seared through adrenaline barriers as he scampered through the thickening trees.

The _thing_ was chasing him, hunting him, he _felt_ it, and all he could think about was running, running, and more running.

It was a losing battle, he knew. He was growing weaker by the minute, from the lack of sleep, the increased exertion he put on his body and mind, and the additional fear and panic coursing through his system. But he also knew that any pain he felt now still paled in comparison to what the _thing_ promised to do if _it_ caught him, here, in this reality.

A claw ringed around two trees to grab his leg, effectively tripping him onto the grassy floor. His mind ran on full panic mode as he frantically tried to shove the large black hand off his bleeding leg but it only gripped tighter, sharp claws digging deeper into the flesh of his calf. He cried out from pain and despair, knowing he was fighting a losing battle.

A sickening high pitched cry of delight silenced his own and he stopped struggling, like a deer frozen, awaiting doom. It appeared through the trees; it's bright ruby eyes flaring with malicious joy at it’s finally captured prize.

He closed his eyes as it dragged him up- there was no chance of rescue. The others were running away from the screaming- besides, he was not the only one in trouble. He should just to accept his fate-

He felt the claws in his calf vanish and he slid to the floor in an ungraceful sprawl as the creature let out an angry scream.

Bill stood between him and the monster, holding a severed clawed arm in his right hand. He turned back to him, his yellow eyes glowing with awesome power, “RUN, YOU IDIOT!”

Without a second's hesitation, Dipper stumbled to his legs, disregarding the pain in his right calf. He heard a sharp disturbing cry sound behind him as he ran deeper into the trees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, this is a short one. Still hope you enjoy it and tell me what you think! See ya in the next one!


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